


Rosemary for Remembrance

by Sintari (OriginalSintari)



Series: The Invictus Arc [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:24:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8388919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OriginalSintari/pseuds/Sintari
Summary: Hyuga is a house with many rooms. A Neji & Hinata-centric work of fanfiction. Expect madness, love, sex, and murder. This is the story of two lives, thus pairings will vary, including Naruto/Hinata, Neji/Hinata. Complete





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in 2005-2006 on LiveJournal.

 

_Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall._

_– Shakespeare, Measure for Measure_

  
One of Hyuuga Hinata’s very earliest memories was the feel of the earth beneath her bare knees and the overpowering scent of a hundred different herbs as she helped her mother work in the private garden.  It was one of the few memories she had where her mother was not conspicuously pregnant with Hanabi. During that time, when Hinata was five, Hyuga Himiko always had to work around her unwieldy stomach and to stop often to rest. In this memory though, her mother was slender.  Her hands – still wearing the Hyuga heirloom ring before it had to be cut off her swollen finger just before Hanabi was born – glided deftly over the plants, bending a stem here, plucking a leaf there. Sometimes she would snap a bud off of its stem and place it in her mouth. Hinata would mimic her, and she would learn when a plant was ready for use, not just by sight, but by taste and touch and smell. Later in this memory, she would follow her mother to the shed where she kept her drying racks.  Some herbs, like dioscorea and ginseng root, would go into the oven to dry out, while others were merely hung upside down from the rafters.  Fresh mint would go into Okaasan’s apron pockets because Otousan liked it in the tea.  
         
But what Hinata remembered most about that day was how her mother had stopped to watch two birds splash in the birdbath. It was a hot day, and Okasaan had removed the band she usually wore around her forehead. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and Hinata caught a glimpse of something beneath her mother’s bangs.  
  
“Are you hurt, Okaasan?” Hinata had asked, and then she had reached one small finger up to touch it. Her mother had pulled back, as if slapped, and then hastily retied her headband.  
  
There were many rules in their household, many things not to touch, or see, or speak of, but before, Hinata could always count on her mother to guide her through the maze of decorum that bound much of the Hyuga Compound.  
  
“It’s nothing,” her mother had said, hastily, and then smiled down at her.  Her white eyes did not crinkle up at the corners though, and so Hinata knew that she had done something wrong. She wanted to cry, but knew that that was not allowed either. Still, her lip had trembled and her mother had noticed.  
  
“Hinata!” she had said, sharply enough that Hinata’s head whipped around to look at her.  
  
“Y-yes?”  
  
Her mother regarded her for a long moment and then shook her head. “I apologize for shouting, but it worked, didn’t it? You’re no longer about to cry.”  
  
Nodding, Hinata realized that this was true.  
  
“A woman does not have the luxury of crying, ever. Remember that.” And Hinata had.  
  
She had followed her mother’s gaze to the house, then, just in time to see her father come outside.  He saw his wife and daughter regarding him and he nodded before continuing on his way. It was Wednesday afternoon, and Otousan would be going out. On Wednesday nights Hinata and Himiko ate dinner without him.  Hinata would never admit it, but she looked forward to Wednesdays.  They usually ate in the kitchen, and she did not have to mind her manners quite so much.  
  
Okaasan watched Otousan go, and Hinata watched Okaasan. When he disappeared from view, Okaasan turned back to her. The two birds had left the birdbath when her father opened the fusuma and now the water was a still pool.  
  
“Hinata,” her mother said, and her voice was suddenly urgent. “I need you to listen to me now. What color is the water in the bird bath?”   
  
Giving the question the serious contemplation that she gave every question, Hinata spent a long moment examining the water before finally answering, “Green.”  
  
Her mother had nodded and then taken one of her small hands and led her up to the porch where they could look out at the Nakano River. “What color is the water in the river?” she had asked.  
  
“Brown.”  
  
Going inside, her mother had turned on the sink and they both watched the stream trickle from the faucet.  
  
“What color is it?” her mother had asked a third time.  
  
“It’s clear,” Hinata had answered, and by this time she was genuinely perplexed.  
  
“That’s right.” In the kitchen, with the water still running, her mother had knelt down until they were face to face. “Water has no color.  The water in the birdbath is only green because the bird bath is green. The water in the Nakano River is brown, because of the mud in the river. Water is passive. It takes on the color of its surroundings. Do you understand?”  
  
Even though she was not sure, Hinata had nodded.  
  
“You and I,” her mother had continued, “have to be like water. Remember that, Hinata. Be the color of water.”  
  
Hinata had nodded again, even though she was more confused now than ever.  
  
“Heir or not, it’s the only way for a Hyuga woman to survive,” her mother had said softly. Hinata would never be sure if she was meant to hear or not.  
  
()()()()()  
  
The first time Neji saw his cousin Hinata he thought she was cute like one of the stable kittens that he had not been allowed to take home, and said as much to his father.  He was four, and it was one of the last times he ever said exactly what he felt without meticulously weighing the words.  
  
His father had been silent for a long moment, the droning sound of his Ojisan’s speech supplying background noise. Finally he had bent down to Neji and said, “It would probably be easier if you didn’t think that way.”  
  
Still, the speeches had gone on forever, and he found his eyes drawn back to the little girl who alternately stood stiffly between her parents and leaned tiredly on her mother’s leg. Soon she began to watch him watching and then they got into a staring contest of sorts. She had then raised one tiny hand and wiggled her fingers a little, and he did the same. Then she had smiled at him just the tiniest bit before burying her face in her mother’s kimono. He had smiled back, and then looked up at his father for approval.  
  
Otousan was paying no attention to him, though. Instead he and Himiko were having a staring contest in much the same way that Neji had had with his cousin except that they did not wave and they did not smile.  
  
Later, Neji would not remember the day this way. It was the day Hiashi _hurt_ him, though truly the pain did heal after a few days and at the time he had not realized what it meant when they said that the mark on his forehead would be with him for the rest his life.  
  
Two or three days, less than a week, after the day of the speeches and his cousin and the painful mark, he had seen Hinata again. They were in the dojo to watch her train, or, as his father put it, “See what this little mouse is capable of.” This time, Neji had waved to her, and she had waved back but then hastily hid her hand behind her back when his father had given them a disapproving look.  
  
After that, he had been especially attentive because his father told him that he was sure to learn something important that day.  
  
“How will I know what’s important?” he had asked as they both sat unobtrusively watching Hiashi train Hinata. So far he was putting her through a simple form, a baby’s pattern that Neji himself had mastered long ago. Still, he felt sorry for her when Hiashi barked, “You’re footwork is sloppy!” for the third time and she cringed away from the harshness in his voice.  
  
“You’ll know,” his father had answered calmly, and he had taken a deep breath before activating his Byakugan. When he was younger Neji had had nightmares about the Byakugan.  His dream self would wander the Compound and around every corner would be someone he knew, the enlarged chakra coils around their eyes transforming them into monsters that chased after him until he teetered on the bank of the Nakano River.  
  
But now, he was learning to activate the Byakugan himself. Otousan would hold up the mirror so that he could see how chakra slightly swelled the coils around his own eyes.  His technique was imperfect, though. His vision would become fuzzy and he could not take more than a few steps with the Byakugan activated before he would become dizzy and fall down.  Still, his father often told him that he had been blessed with more of the Hyuga natural ability than anyone in a thousand years and so Neji trained every day until his stomach turned over from dizziness and his special eyes watered and ached.   
  
“Listen, Neji. This Hinata-sama of the Main Family, you will live to protect her and the Hyuga blood. Do you understand?”  
  
He had nodded, eagerly. She looked like someone who needed protecting. At first he thought that this must be the important thing that he was to learn.  
  
But then it had happened.  
  
His father had clenched his fists tightly and then narrowed his eyes to slits as he watched the little girl work her way through her forms. He chuckled a bit when she stumbled again and Neji might have had grasped the beginnings of a thought that this was very rude but then his uncle had shouted something and his father suddenly fell to the ground clutching his forehead.  
  
Neji had looked to Hiashi for help, but his uncle had only knelt with his hand wrapped around the back of his cousin’s neck, holding her head steady, forcing her to look.  
  
“Watch closely!” he had barked, and both children had obeyed as his father’s suffering continued on and on.   
  
Neji would always regret that he hadn’t found the courage to tell his uncle and cousin to turn their faces away.  Didn’t they know that pain was a private thing?  
  
But he never forgave either of them for witnessing his father’s guttural cries of agony, the white flecks of foam that collected at the corners of his mouth or the undignified way he clutched his forehead where the jinjutsu had turned black and angry  
  
When he grew older he would come to realize that there had been no need for his father’s display in the dojo that day. A week later he was attending a funeral with no coffin and that was all the demonstration he needed that his life was in their hands.  
  
()()()()()  
  
The Byakugan is hard on a woman in many ways. For instance, a mother carrying a child who will possess the Byakugan almost always has a difficult pregnancy.  Hyuga family legend holds that this has always been so.  
  
Himiko insisted on explaining this to Hinata herself when the midwife had to be called in for the third time in as many weeks. The baby wanted to come early, she told her daughter.  But this was good news, because it meant that the child would also most likely be blessed with the Hyuga’s special eyes and Otousan would be pleased.  
  
She did not explain how the cotton root extract she took in her morning tea had somehow failed to prevent the conception, or how, if the baby survived, she would have to live and die with the knowledge that one of her children was destined to be marked with the same cursed seal she wore on her own forehead. She did not explain how she had noticed the correlation between Hiashi describing Hinata’s training sessions as “a disappointment” and the frequency with which her husband turned to her in the night.  
  
And she would never explain what she was doing the day four months ago when Hinata had walked in on her making tea with the wild cherry bark she collected ostensibly to poison the wild dogs that sometimes invaded the Hyuga compound in the winter time.  
  
That day, Hinata had clutched the cloth of her thin yukata in both small fists as Himiko flung the tea, kettle and all, into the Nakano River.  
  
“You see, Hinata,” she had concluded, both hands resting on her cumbersome stomach as she sat up in the bed, “The Byakugan is hard on a woman in every way. It is difficult to possess eyes like ours, especially when so much of a woman’s life depends on her turning her head and pretending not to see.”  
  
Himiko never knew how much of her teachings Hinata truly took in, but just then the baby kicked again sending a blinding pain radiating out from her lower stomach, reminding her of her destiny.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Hyuga married young.  It was the duty of the Main House to maintain a pure Hyuga line, as it was the duty of the Branch House to protect that line.  Since all the younger siblings from the Main House were bound with the Hyuga’s cursed seal, it only followed that the Branch family was much larger than the Main. Most marriages within the clan were arranged, and it was tacitly understood that as the Branch Family’s generations began to grow and diverge away from the Main Family that they would marry those with normal eyes until the Byakugan was bred out of their line.  This way, those who possessed the Byakugan were closely bound by blood ties and there was always a pool of distant Byakugan-blessed relations for the heir to pick from as a spouse likely to breed a worthy successor.  
  
These marriages were not love matches. Himiko had never known Hiashi outside of family functions until their betrothal was cemented when she was nine and he was thirteen. He later confessed to her that he could not remember seeing her before they were introduced at the ceremony where her father gave her over to the Main Family’s care. After that he was trained to be a Great Man and she a Great Man’s wife.  
  
Hinata knew all this because her mother told her when they lay in her futon at night awaiting the birth of the baby. Her mother would whisper it into the shell of her ear, along with the strange, disjointed bits of advice about never crying and the color of water.  
  
And turning her head and not seeing.  
  
One Thursday morning in Hinata’s first year at the Academy, they had gone to the market on a fieldtrip. The point of the exercise was to learn to observe their surroundings unobtrusively. Sensei had chucked her under the chin and commented that she should be especially good at this, which had called attention to her in front of the whole class and caused her to hide her face behind her hands. She only belatedly realized that Sensei had been referring to the alleged exceptional observational skills of those with the Byakugan and not the fact that Hinata had become adept at not being seen.  
  
They had been put to work observing Craft Street where the air was thick with sawdust and the unique smell of cedar. Sensei pretended to give them a lecture, when in reality, they were supposed to observe as much about the street that they could and report when they returned back to school.  
  
Back at the Academy that afternoon, Hinata forgot to report the shopkeeper who had sat in front of his shop with a poorly concealed clay jug behind his back or the markings on the cat that had jumped from a third story window ledge onto the butcher’s awning.  
  
And even when Sensei said in front of the class that she would fail the assignment if she did not speak up, she could not bring herself to report how she had saw her father step out of a doorway that she would later find out led to an apartment above a woodworker’s shop.  She did not report the black-eyed woman who followed him out, or the way Otousan had brushed his knuckles across her pale cheek before turning and walking toward the bridge that would lead him over the Nakano River and to the Hyuga Compound. She did not report the way the woman watched him go until he was out of sight, her hand curled around a pendant that hung down over her heart.  
  
Hyuga married young. These were not love matches.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Neji’s mother had died giving birth to a baby boy who had never drawn breath. He knew that she was named Reiko, that she had had brown eyes and that her ashes had floated down the Nakano River to the sea long ago.  
  
Now Neji accompanied his guardian, his aunt Toshiko, to the market because, if he was worth nothing else, he did have a strong back and Obasan was nursing her new baby, which apparently meant that it had to come with her wherever she went.  
  
They had just crested the hill that conveniently hid the market from the Hyuga gates when Obasan thrust the baby into his arms and barreled down the hill, frantically waving to catch the attention of a peddler who was leading his lone ox toward Konoha’s main gate.  
  
Startled, Neji grasped the baby tightly in both hands, and held it stiffly in front of him.  It began to stir then. Fearing that it might do something like wake up, or worse, cry, he tried to arrange the baby boy in his arms the way he had seen Obasan and the other women do it, nestling the head with its white stocking hat in the crook of his elbow and using his other hand to support its tightly swaddled body.  
  
From the bottom of the hill, he heard Obasan shrill, “Stay right there, Neji! I’ll be right back.”  
  
Nodding, because even at seven years old he would never yell across public space like that, Neji bent his head down to study his charge further. In his haste to situate the infant, he had skewed its little white hat. When he tried to right it, his thumb brushed over the perfect forehead.  The forehead that, in a few years, would not be so perfect anymore. He hadn’t understood it when Ojisan broke open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact that their baby was born with Byakugan, even though Obasan did not carry the trait herself and she had married outside the clan. He traced a pattern – the shape of the cursed jutsu – onto the tiny immaculate forehead before tugging the hat back into place.  
  
He would be doing the baby a service if he snapped its spindly neck right now.  
  
It opened its eyes then. And for some reason that he couldn’t quite explain the milky gaze reminded him of the time driving rain had caused a dove to become trapped in the courtyard and unable to fly. It was after his father’s death, and he was to attend a family dinner that night at the Main House with Obasan and Ojisan. The Gardener, who had been covering up some of Himiko’s useless plants, caught the dove and was about to wring it’s neck. Neji had caught the bird’s eye, then. Large and opaque they were so trusting, even with the Gardener’s rough hands poised around its throat. Neji, much smaller then, had begged until the Gardener promised to let it go. The old servant had taken it around back to release it and his father had called him inside to dress for dinner.   
  
That night, at the Main House table, one course included a portion of meat in a white wine sauce.  
  
“This is delicious, what is it?” Hiashi had asked one of the kitchen staff.  
  
“Dove, sir.”  
  
Of course it was. This was the Hyuga, after all. He hadn’t needed his special eyes to see that coming.  
  
The baby’s wide, round eyes were like dove’s eyes. Like his hated cousin Hinata’s eyes when, even at four years old, she had pushed her plate away and asked timidly to be excused.  
  
()()()()()  
  
The next time they met, Hinata waved to him and Neji turned his back to her.  
  
Thus the years passed.


	2. Blackthorn

 

_The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves._

_\- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar_

  
  
Hyuga Himiko’s body was pulled from the Nakano River on a Wednesday evening.  
  
And even though the Hyugas that gathered on the river bank at the news that the search was over had dozens of sets of Byakugan eyes between them, none of them noticed Hinata until she had gotten close enough to see roots tangled in long black hair. Her mother’s pink formal kimono was a gash of color where the setting sun had cast the world in silver.   
  
An old uncle finally noticed Hinata when she reached up to take one of her mother’s hands. Surprisingly, the Heir did not cry, so they allowed the small gesture while Hiashi carried the body all the way up to the hill and into the house.  
  
It was determined that Himiko had been gathering her herbs by the riverbed and had fallen and hit her head on a rock.   
  
Later, with the infant Hanabi beside them in her cradle, Hiashi would remark on Hinata’s dry eyes. It would be her last compliment from her father for a long time to come.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Despite the ominous portent of her mother’s mysterious death so soon after her birth, it was clear that Hiashi’s second daughter would be another Hyuga genius. At three years old, Hanabi could flawlessly execute the basic forms and then activate her fledgling Byakugan in the kitchen to discover which cabinet hid the cookies.  
  
Tongues had wagged two years before when the Heir was betrothed to a non-Byakugan user, the younger Uchiha. And they wagged again when Hanabi’s third birthday came and went and her forehead remained bare of the jinjutsu that would cement her status in the Branch House. As Hanabi grew and the marked difference between Hiashi’s two girls became clear, rumors flew that Hiashi would put the weaker Hinata aside for the younger but more skilled Hanabi.  
  
()()()()()  
  
There are certain established rules of decorum in a house where people can see through walls.  When you have eyes that can see everything, it’s surprising how much time you spend not looking.  
  
“Tetsuo is smoking cigarettes again,” Hanabi reported to Hinata one day after school. The older Hyuga looked up from her homework to find her sister peering through their dining room wall.  
  
“Don’t. It’s rude,” she admonished, but Hanabi, as usual, ignored her. The younger girl had finished her homework long ago and should have been at her training.  Hinata knew it was uncharitable, but she secretly thought her sister enjoyed pestering her while she worried over her math homework. It had always been her most despised subject and one that Hanabi, of course, excelled at.  
  
Hinata knew she should try to stop Hanabi from spying, but instead she used the reprieve to concentrate on a particularly vexing word problem. She thought she has almost figured the formula out when Hanabi, added, “Oh! There’s Neji!”  
  
Hinata’s pencil faltered and she had to erase a stray line she had accidentally drawn on the page.  
  
“I wonder if he would fight me?” Hanabi mused aloud.   
  
“No!” Hinata exclaimed, and both sisters were taken aback by the force behind her words. More softly, she added, “You know father told you to stay away from him. You’ll get in trouble.”   
  
Hanabi, who was perched on their dining table now, peered at Hinata from under her lashes. “Or I could get him in trouble,” she said slyly.  
  
Hinata’s brows drew together in puzzlement. “Hanabi, what do you mean?” she asked cautiously.  
  
“I saw you both at school.” Hanabi shrugged. “The way he glared at you until you fumbled your shuriken throw and Iruka gave you a bad mark.  I’ll bet father wouldn’t like to know how someone from the Branch Family,” she said the name of the lower house as if tasting sour milk, “caused someone from the Main Family to fail a test.”  
  
Hinata had gone deathly pale in her chair, homework forgotten. “Don’t,” she breathed to her younger sister, eyes wide. “P-p-lease. Just don’t say anything about that to Otousan. It was m-my fault.”  
  
“What will you give me?” Hanabi asked, obviously pleased with her sister’s response. Hinata finally realized that this was what she had been angling for all along as she remembered how Hanabi had remarked on the pendant she had received for her last birthday.  Her father had gifted her with the silver heart-shaped charm from her mother’s jewelry collection when she turned eleven.  
  
“I-“ Hinata began, and for once she was grateful to her stammer for giving her the time to  stop and think. Before she had to make a decision, though, she was saved by her father’s entrance. After smiling at Hanabi’s work, he nodded at the younger girl and then sent her out to train. Hanabi darted a small, sharp-toothed smile over her shoulder at her older sister as she left the room. For once, Hinata could have kissed her father as he lectured her on her uncompleted problems.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Hanabi was able to slip away from her instructor easily enough. In matters of skill, it was clear that she had already surpassed him, even at six years old. In fact, Hanabi was sure that she could defeat anyone living in the Hyuga Compound, except her father.  
  
And possibly, her cousin Neji.  
  
She had used her Byakugan to spy on him as he left their aunt’s house at the back of the Compound and headed toward the forest.  Choosing a route through the trees, she prepared to materialize on top of one of the posts where Neji was practicing with his shurikens. Hanabi loved dramatic entrances.  
  
She had already molded chakra in her legs to propel the jump when she heard the calm, flat voice from below her.  
  
“Go away.”  
  
Startled – how had he seen her? His Byakugan wasn’t even activated!? – Hanabi stumbled a bit and ended up making an ungraceful landing beside the post. Scowling a little, she straightened herself and demanded, “Not until you fight me!”  
  
She was surprised when her cousin scowled back at her. “I’m training,” he said tonelessly.  
  
“Then I’m here to help,” she declared, and dropped into her stance.  
  
It did not escape her notice when her cousin rolled his eyes.   
  
“Don’t you know who I am?” she asked imperiously.   
  
She was answered by a rush of air as a shuriken flew by her ear before landing in the center of the target. She stood there, stunned that he would dare, and another shuriken soon followed the first. Placing her hands on her hips and standing firmly in front of the target she shouted, “You can’t just throw shurikens at me!”  
  
A kunai brushed by her scalp so close that she thought it shaved a couple of hairs from the top of her head.  
  
She clenched her fists in frustration. “I’m Hanabi, the Hyuga Second Daughter and I demand that you fight me. Right now!”  
  
Her cousin finally ceased his barrage of weapons. “Oh yeah?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. “Or you’ll what?”  
  
At this, her lips curved into a small smile and she slowly brought her finger up and tapped her bare forehead. Observant, she was inwardly pleased to see her impassive cousin swallow before replying.  
  
“You don’t know how,” he said, voice expressionless again. Never completely turning his back on her, Neji began gathering his weapons from the target and dropping them back into his pack.  
  
“I do so!” Hanabi countered.  
  
Neji smirked, and if she had unsettled him at all with her implied threat he showed no sign of nervousness now.  
  
“You’re lying. I can tell by the way your eyes moved just now.”  
  
Hanabi scowled at him again. “Oh, so you’re a mind reader? What else do you think you know?”  
  
Neji’s smile showed sharp, even teeth. “That you’ll never know how to do that.” He tapped his covered forehead. “Because you’ll have one yourself soon enough.”  
  
Hanabi scoffed and trailed along behind Neji as he walked in the direction of the Hyuga Compound. Apparently he would rather cut his training session short than be there with her.  
  
“I’ve seen those marks. I know you have one on your forehead. But they’re for the Branch House, not the Main House.”  
  
Neji was a few steps ahead of her, and made no attempt to raise his voice so she could hear him.  
  
“And how do you think one becomes a member of the Branch House?”  
  
Hanabi considered for a moment. “Easy. You’re born into it.”  
  
Neji turned back to face her then. “In most cases, yes. But there is a special case. When the Head of the Clan has more than one child, all but the oldest are consigned to the Branch House, as well.” He added, as if in afterthought, “Second Daughter.”  
  
Hanabi felt her face flush. But then she had an idea. “Do you mean there can only be one heir?”  
  
“Yes,” he answered her curtly. “And you’re not it.”  
  
They were nearing the Compound now and she knew she would get in trouble if she were seen with her older cousin. But as the gates with their embossed flame symbols came into view she brought her fingers to her own smooth forehead.  
  
“We’ll see about that.”  
  
Neji just turned and smirked at her again. “It’s your destiny, Second Daughter. There’s nothing you can do about it.”  
  
The implications of all that he had said were suddenly clear to her. It was true that there was only one heir and right now, that was Hinata. All of the pieces began to fall into place as she stood there on the banks of the Nakano River.  
  
And then she made a vow.  
  
“You listen to me,” she shouted at her cousin’s retreating back, and her raised voice sounded thin and reedy above the flowing of the water. “I’ll never be a caged bird. Never!”  
  
Her cousin ignored her and slipped inside the heavy gates.  
  
Before following, Hanabi looked out across the water for a long moment.  
  
“Never,” she whispered to herself. “I swear it.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
Hinata was not unhappy with her Genin team. Kurenai was a patient instructor, and both of her teammates were boys from old clans. Her father dismissed the Inuzukas as “half-wild” and warned her that the Aburames were a suspicious and distrustful bunch, but she found that she got along well with Kiba and Shino. She did not dare voice her disappointment that she hadn’t been paired on a team with Uzumaki Naruto. The one time she had made the mistake of mentioning that particular boy at home she had been told in no uncertain terms that she was forbidden from associating with him.  
  
So she was slightly apprehensive about accepting when Naruto asked her for a walk one afternoon. He had found her in the street studying a poster advertising the upcoming Chuunin exam. Her interest in the flyer was more to delay going home than because she thought Kurenai would enter her team. When he approached her, she had shot a glance across the river to the Hyuga Compound, but she saw no one watching her and she could only hope that no one would be rude enough to use their Byakugan to peer though the walls.  
  
“Let’s walk by the river,” he had suggested.  She thought that he seemed unusually subdued, but she chalked it up to nervousness. He had never seemed to notice her before. In fact, before he had called to her in the street, she wasn’t even sure that he had known her name. He turned to take them downstream, toward where her mother’s body had been found.  
  
“L-let’s walk the other way,” she had said, and after asking her to speak up where he could hear her, he had agreed.  
  
They had walked in silence. And that more than anything clued her into to the fact that something was very wrong.  
  
Finally, after what felt like a mile of steeling herself, she found the nerve to ask, “Naruto-kun? Why is it you wanted to walk with me?”  
  
She had smiled to herself when he scratched the back of his head in a very Naruto-like gesture. And so she was looking away when he somehow slipped and fell into the river.  
  
“Oi! Hinata, I can’t swim!” he had shouted in a panicked voice, arms flailing. And even though he was no more than a few yards from her, his voice had sounded very far away.  
  
For a few seconds, she stood on the bank paralyzed by the belief that the river was going to take a second person she cared for.  
  
Then that everything had clicked into place. She activated her Byakugan just to be sure, and as she had thought, the chakra patterns traveling through the drowning body were not Naruto’s. They were Iruka’s.  
  
“I won’t go into the river, Iruka-sensei,” she had said quietly. “I know you can swim, and so can Naruto.”  
  
A puff of smoke revealed that the person who had asked her for a walk was indeed Iruka-sensei. Her former teacher climbed out of the river, soaking wet and smiling weakly.  
  
“You’ve passed!” he declared, and she didn’t need Byakugan to see that his cheeriness was just an act.   
  
She stared at him incredulously as he explained about the preliminary tests for the Chuunin exam.  Kiba and Shino had passed too, he told her, and she should talk to Kurenai about what to do next.  
  
They stood there together for a moment, both looking into the river. With her Byakugan activated, Hinata could see through the surface to the bottom. That was how they had found her mother that day – they had looked through the water with their special eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the Byakugan was gone and the surface of the river was just a smooth brown sheet in front of her.  
  
“You passed the test because you saw through my illusion, it’s true. But a Chuunin also has to face her fears,” Iruka had said. “Think about that before you decide to take the test, Hinata.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
When you have studied someone as Neji had Hinata, it is a simple thing to dissect that person. To cut her into easily digested pieces in front of her peers. To expose every weakness, and every hidden fear.  
  
Even virtues can become flaws under a strong enough glare.  
  
He knew how to tear her up, and how to take her apart, because he had been watching her every move since she was three years old.  
  
“The person lost and suffering within the Main and Branch Houses is you, Neji-niisan.”  
  
What stung was that she could do the same to him when, as far as he knew, she had never really seen him at all.


	3. Ivy

 

_To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods._

_\- Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale_

Part of the agreement between the Main House and the Branch House – the part where Neji personally watched over Hinata – had been all but forgotten after Hyuga Hizashi’s sacrifice. A politician at heart, his uncle Hiashi reminded Neji of his duty after the Chuunin exam. Nobody saw fit to remark on the thinly veiled attempt to bring Neji back into the family fold after his unprecedented display of skill when he fought with Uzumaki Naruto.  He had been a wild card for far too long.  
  
At first, as Neji healed from his fight with Kidomaru, his duties consisted of standing behind Hinata at ceremonies. Soon, Hiashi began calling him into his office for chats. That was when Neji realized that he was being groomed to be Hinata’s councilor; much like his father had been for Hiashi. Every time he sat in the large office, he couldn’t help but remember how that had turned out for his father. He understood that Hizashi had won in the end, escaped the fate of the caged bird and died for his family and friends. But he was still dead, and Neji had missed him every day. It was not the idea of making that sacrifice that bothered him now.  The last year, and specifically his fight with Naruto and their subsequent mission to rescue Uchiha Sasuke, had opened his eyes to a number of things. Konoha, his friends, perhaps even the Byakugan were worth dying for, it was true, but sometimes it bothered him that very few people would miss him if he were called upon to make a sacrifice like his father’s.  Though he would never admit it.  
  
Neji had always tried his best at everything he did, and knowing that he worked not only for himself but for others only made him push himself that much harder.  
  
And so he asked for extra time to think when Hiashi took him aside one evening to ask his opinion on a matter concerning Hinata. Should they void the formal betrothal agreement between her and the remaining Uchiha? It was true that he had betrayed the village. But if by some chance he were dragged kicking and screaming back, the marriage could afford a unique opportunity.  
  
“When he opens his eyes to see beyond the romantic idea of revenge,” Hiashi had told him seriously, “he will realize that he has few allies. The boy will be honor bound to hold to the betrothal agreement and the Sharingan will come back home to roost.”  
  
Neji’s mouth had gone dry. “You sound like you have already made your decision, Hiashi-sama.”  
  
“It’s important to think of both sides of any argument, Neji. On the other hand, the Uchiha boy is a traitor. And there is the very real possibility that he may be killed in the fighting or never return. Konoha, and the Hyuga, will gain immeasurable leverage if the heir is marriageable again. Such a circumstance could be especially useful in a time of war.”  
  
Neji had nodded to show that he understood. That was the day that he first realized that a diplomat like Hiashi wove more webs than someone like Kidomaru could have ever imagined.  
  
“What about the Byakugan? Isn’t it Hinata’s duty to the Clan to produce an heir with our special ability?”  
  
Neji had been puzzled by Hiashi’s brief smile. “Her blood is strong, even if she is not. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. We are lucky that my late wife managed to produce two blessed children. If it comes down to it, one of Hanabi’s children can succeed Hinata. And there’s plenty of time yet to think of a match for Hanabi.”  Neji had thought Hiashi’s glance at him just then was a tad too appraising.  
  
He had excused himself with a plea to think on the question overnight.  It shamed him a bit that it took him more than an hour to realize that this problem did not only involve documents and power games. It involved people.  
  
Maybe there was more Hyuga in him than he cared to admit.  
  
So when he saw Hinata in her garden, he decided to ask her opinion on the matter.  
  
“Hinata-sama.” Though they had spoken quite civilly to one another since their fight in their first Chuunin exam, they had never been alone together. And he had never initiated the contact. Busy doing something with a spade, she had turned to him with a start and he realized that he had surprised her. The heir to the Hyuga Clan should have heard him approaching, no matter how safe she felt in her own garden within the walls of her own home. He hadn’t even muffled his footsteps. Neji made a note to speak with Hiashi about it, and then immediately thought better of it. The Head had already written her off as a chess piece - a Queen maybe, but a piece nonetheless. Telling him would only get her in trouble and likely would not solve the problem.  
  
She had placed her spade in the basket beside her and stood up to greet him. He stood there stiffly as she wiped her hands on a pair of filthy old pants with worn out knees and then ran a hand over her bare forehead.  
  
“You have dirt-” He tapped his own covered forehead. “Here.”  
  
Blushing – he realized that he had seen her with pink cheeks more often than without - she brushed her forehead again. “Did I get it?”  
  
He shook his head and she tried again. Looking around, he wondered suddenly where everyone was. Generally the courtyard was filled with servants and various family members. A large crop of Hyuga children had entered the Academy this year and could generally be found in the training yard after school. But that corner of the courtyard was empty, too. It was as if the entire Compound was giving them their privacy.  
  
When she looked up at him again, a smudge of dirt still staining her perfect forehead, he almost changed his mind about asking her.  
  
“You got it,” he lied. And for the entire brief time they talked his fingers would itch to brush that last smudge of dirt off her face.  
  
“What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?” He saw her eyes dart around the empty courtyard, an easy enough reaction to read. He made her nervous.  
  
Neji cleared his throat and began again. “Hinata-sama. As you probably know your father has began training me as a member of his council.”  
  
She nodded and he could see that she was listening carefully.  
  
“And well, he asked for my opinion today.” She was still watching him expectantly. “On a matter regarding you.”  
  
“Oh. Well.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sure that, between the both of you, you will make a good decision about whatever it is.”  
  
Neji was baffled. “Don’t you even want to know what it was about? It was about you. Your future. Your whole life.”  
  
“Does it m-matter?” He sensed that she was trying to sound nonchalant. The stammer ruined the façade.  
  
She wasn’t looking at him now. A moment passed in silence.  
  
“It’s your life,” he said finally.  
  
“Yes it is. And I’m s-sorry. It’s just that- Well, I’m not really the one to come to if you need help making decisions about my life.” She looked at the ground.  “I thought that you of all people would understand that.”  
  
He did. He had been such a fool, really.  
  
“Well, I’m asking you now. Should he come back to Konoha, do you want to marry Uchiha Sasuke?”  
  
Hinata looked up at him sharply. “No! He’s a traitor to Konoha. He nearly got you and Chouji-san killed. And he upset Naruto-kun so much. Surely Otousan isn’t still thinking of honoring the betrothal if he comes back?”  
  
He did not tell her how similar her reaction had been to his own.  
  
“All I know is that he asked my opinion,” Neji said truthfully. “I didn’t know what to say. So I thought I would ask you. Like I said, it’s your life.”  
  
The tentative smile they shared between them then was one of those moments of pure understanding.  
  
“Well, I’ll tell him I think it’s a bad idea then. Not that he’ll listen if he decides otherwise.”  
  
“Of course not,” Hinata agreed. “But still-” she trailed off.  
  
Neji merely nodded and turned to walk away.  
  
“Neji.” Her voice was quiet. He turned back around to see her still standing in the same spot. “Thank you.” And then she smiled at him, just a little.  
  
He nodded again, and wordlessly reached up to rub the last remaining bit of dirt off of her forehead.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Hinata made a point to revive her mother’s neglected garden, and by the time she graduated from the Academy, the plot had once again bloomed to its original size. She had also made use of her mother’s shed again, with its ovens, drying racks and mixing vats.  She did have to put up with the occasional snide comment that spending so much time herb gardening was not a very fitting pastime for a kunoichi until it turned out that her ointments could sooth most any ailment, from cuts to blisters to itching. And it also turned out that she was either too embarrassed or too discreet to gossip when a shame-faced Branch House cousin visited her to find a remedy for an affliction he had caught among the whores in the gambling town to the north. After that, her ointments were in high demand throughout the village, especially when her father wouldn’t allow her to accept payment for something as common as brewing herbal remedies.  
  
Sometimes, while Hinata worked, Hanabi liked to sit on the fence that separated the herb garden from the rest of the courtyard and watch. Hinata had never understood her sister’s inclination to seek her out and spend time with her. They had never gotten along and any long conversations they had always left Hinata feeling uneasy. It was as if Hanabi knew something she did not.  
  
“I heard that this was our mother’s garden,” Hanabi announced one afternoon. Hinata was, as usual, on her knees in the dirt with a basket at her side, pulling the endless weeds that seemed to plague her most potent medicinal herbs. Hanabi was walking back and forth on top of the narrow fence, most likely having been instructed to practice her chakra control. Hinata looked up in time to see her sister leap and turn a perfect cartwheel on top of the enclosure.  
  
“Very good,” she told her sister absently, and it would have been impressive indeed if she hadn’t seen the very same trick a thousand times before. “And yes, it was our mother’s garden.”  
  
Hanabi perched on the fence now, kicking her feet against it noisily. At ten, she looked the part of a Hyuga – high cheek-boned and willowy. Ever since Hinata could remember strangers and acquaintances alike had remarked on what a beautiful child she was. Hinata, on the other hand, resembled their mother. She was shorter, and much to her embarrassment when her teammates began to notice, more rounded.  
  
“I also hear that she killed herself because Otousan did not love her,” Hanabi continued conversationally. Her legs stopped in mid-kick when Hinata glanced up at her sharply.  
  
“Then you heard wrong,” she snapped, an innocent weed bearing the brunt of her anger. “And the next time you hear that story, you tell them that she fell and hit her head by the river looking for the very plants that they need so much to heal their cuts and burns!”   
  
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hanabi drop to the ground beside her.  
  
“Take it easy. I’m sorry. I just wanted to know if it was true. Nobody ever tells me anything.” Her tone didn’t sound very sorry at all.  
  
“I heard one more thing,” Hanabi began pacing the garden path, inspecting the plants. “That you are a lot like her.”  
  
Hinata pinked slightly at that. “I suppose that’s true,” she said tentatively. “We were both good with plants.”  
  
Hanabi gave her one of her sharp toothed smiles. “Then I’m not sure I would have cared to have known her.”  
  
The words registered at the same time she saw Hanabi bend down to pluck the flower off of a plant with shriveled red berries.  
  
“Don’t touch it!” Hinata warned.  
  
She could hear her mother’s voice clearly.  
  
_“Steeped for ten minutes a small infusion of this will kill a wild dog. A larger infusion will kill something larger than a dog. Do you understand, Hinata?”_  
  
“The leaves will give you a rash,” she lied.   
  
And she hadn’t stammered at all.  
  
()()()()()  
  
“How long do you think this will last?”  Ichiro huddled closer to the wall, elbowing Maki aside. The wind had shifted, driving the cold rain directly into the shallow awning over Konoha’s main gate. It was never enviable to draw gate duty, and, to their dismay, the two perpetual Genin had found themselves standing guard outside the big walls more and more often lately.  
  
“I’d bet it doesn’t last more than thirty minutes,” Maki replied.  
  
”How much do you want to bet?” Ichiro countered, falling into their old routine.  
  
“How about lunch?”  
  
“Deal.”  
  
Ichiro stomped his feet to warm them. “You know, you still owe me lunch for last week. I won the bet that your wife would find out that you lost your paycheck to me again.”  
  
Maki glared at him.  
  
“What?” Ichiro grinned into the rain.  
  
“Hey wait,” Maki began accusingly. “You never paid up on our bet that we wouldn’t get gate duty this week.”  
  
Their conversation was momentarily interrupted when three shinobi wearing rain gear passed through the gate with a quick chorus of hellos.  
  
“Have a safe trip,” Ichiro called to their retreating backs. One, whom the two Genin recognized as the Hyuga heir, turned around and waved to them before she and her teammates jumped into the trees.   
  
“She’s not a bad looking girl,” Maki commented.  
  
Ichiro sighed. “There’s no such thing as a bad looking girl to you.”  
  
Maki was not deterred. “How old is she now, do you think?”  
  
Ichiro elbowed his partner. “For one, she’s just fifteen. Two, like a Hyuga would give your sorry ass a second look. Three, if Megumi heard you talking like that, she would castrate you.”  
  
Maki nodded, though he still seemed to be considering.  
  
“That was her team with her wasn’t it?” he asked after a few minutes. “The Aburame boy and one of the Inuzukas?”  
  
Ichiro nodded.  
  
“Think one of them has popped her cherry?” Maki asked conversationally.   
   
Ichiro turned to look at him, perplexed. Seeing his partner’s expression caused a matching wicked grin to spread over his face. They spoke simultaneously.   
   
“How much you want to bet?”   
  
()()()()()  
  
It promised to be a sodden night.  The three Chuunin would have postponed the mission, but they had been instructed that the hasty delivery of their parcel – a porcelain mask – was imperative.  Hinata had only seen the object once before it was carefully wrapped and stowed in Shino’s pack and privately, she would be glad to get rid of it. What at first appeared to be an unremarkable grayish sculpture, upon closer inspection turned out to be some sort of death mask. And the model had died horribly. All they were told was that the mask was recently discovered in the remains of an old laboratory and that it needed to be delivered to an elderly Sand Village nin who specialized in death jutsus.  
  
They could not find much to talk about as they traveled through the trees, though whether this was because of the driving rain or Shino’s mood, Hinata was not sure. Though the average person found all of Shino’s emotions equally opaque, Hinata, and to a lesser extent, Kiba, had become adept enough in the last three years to figure out that he was brooding about something.  Her attempts throughout the day to comfort him were met with either a stony, “Nothing’s wrong” or a dismissive shake of his head.   
  
Kiba finally revealed the problem that evening when the three of them were searching for dry brush for a campfire.  
  
“He went out on a date with that Ueda Keiko girl.” Kiba ignored the scorching look Shino shot his way and continued. “Shino thought they had a great time, but at the end she said that they just wouldn’t work because the kikai freak her out.”  
  
From the heat of the look Kiba was now receiving from Shino, Hinata imagined that smoke would start rising from beneath his hood any second. Kiba must have caught it too because he suggested hastily, “I’ll set a perimeter.”  
  
As soon as he disappeared in to the trees, Shino grumbled, “Sometimes I really hate that guy.”  
  
Hinata offered him what was meant to be a reassuring smile. “He means well, Shino. He just wants you happy. We both do.”  
  
Shino just nodded and began building the fire. Hinata waited a few long moments for him to say more, but when he did not she sighed and began pitching the tents.  Kiba came back long enough to tell them that he would take first watch.  
  
After the three tents were set up – Kiba and Shino refused to share – Hinata added some of her herbs to the powdered stew they had brought along as rations. The rain had finally stopped for good, so after dinner, they sat beside the fire in companionable silence.  Still worried, Hinata placed a reassuring hand on her teammate’s knee.  
  
“You know,” Shino said quietly. “Keiko and I really did have a great time. I was so sure she was enjoying herself.  What am I stupid or something for even trying?”  
  
Hinata squeezed his knee. “You’re not stupid! I know you like her, but Shino, if anyone is stupid, she is!” The words tumbled out in a rush. “If she can’t see that you’re special with or without your kikai, then she doesn’t deserve you.”  
  
She could tell he was smirking behind the high collar. “You’re sweet, Hinata, but that won’t reassure me when I’m still a virgin at thirty.”  
  
Hinata felt herself blush scarlet. This was new territory for the two of them. Shino didn’t seem to notice.  
  
One hand massaged his temples. “I’ve never even kissed a girl, Hinata.”  
  
“Neither have I. I mean, kissed a boy! So it’s okay.”  
  
Shino glanced at her. “But you will. You don’t have the same impediments that I do.”  
  
She smiled sadly into the orange flames of their campfire.  
  
“But what if the boy I want to kiss never wanted to kiss me back?”  
  
“Naruto is an idiot. He only ever wanted what he couldn’t have. Maybe he’ll be different when he gets back, you don’t know.” Out of the corner of her eye Hinata saw him shrug. “He never saw what a good thing he could have had.”  
  
She glanced over at him and smiled, and he smiled back.  Even after three years, the sight of him without his dark glasses was still rare enough to make her look twice. His eyes were hazel, a perfect cross between green and brown.  
  
Their gazes held a long second.  
  
“Can I-?” Shino began.  
  
“We could-” Hinata said.  
  
Then at the same time: “Okay.”  
  
Hinata would later realize that it was an awkward kiss, as far as kisses go. They didn’t melt into it or forget the world around them. She was pretty sure that they were both still aware of the night sounds in the forest, of the fire, and the fact that it had started sprinkling gently soon after their lips touched. They had been sitting beside one another, and somehow she had ended up on her knees so that they could find a better position for their mouths to meet. Shino’s tongue was tentative in her mouth at first, and his stiff collar kept bumping her chin until he finally unbuttoned it. And they didn’t use their hands until Hinata nearly toppled and grabbed both of his shoulders for balance. He ran one hand through her hair then, and had ended up pulling it. But she would never tell him that.  
  
When they pulled back, Shino said quietly, “Naruto doesn’t know what he’s missing.”  
  
“Neither does Ueda Keiko.” Hinata smiled.  
  
And if they both exaggerated just a little bit, it was okay, because those are things that friends do.   
  
()()()()()  
  
Neji was a shinobi, trained in stealth and all the arts of a spy. Yet there was still something distasteful to him about his current mission for Hiashi.  His task was to roam Konoha and gather information.  Though it seemed innocuous enough, and Hiashi assured him that the Hyuga had always had informants throughout the village, Neji could not help but feel like he was being forced to serve two masters.  
  
He had decided to loiter awhile by the gate, to observe the comings and goings in the village. So far the only thing he had discovered was that one of the gate guards had lost his winter boots to another on in an inane bet over the activities of two squirrels.  
  
He was slightly interested when he heard the two Genin at the gate greet some newcomers, only to realize that it was just Hinata, Shino and Kiba in from their mission to the Sand Village. He considered greeting them, but decided to remain in his hiding place on the wall. Conversation between himself and his cousin could still be somewhat awkward, especially around her two protective teammates. Still, he watched as they walked to the fork in the road where Hinata would turn and cross the river toward their home. He watched Kiba wave goodbye, leaving Hinata and Shino talking in the street. He didn’t need Byakugan activated to tell that they were both nervous, even from this distance. Hinata was toeing the ground and Shino kept glancing around as if they were about to rob a bank.  
  
Neji’s brows furrowed slightly when he saw his cousin stand on tiptoe and give the Aburame a quick peck on the cheek.  
  
Other travelers had come through the gate in the meantime, but later Neji would have been hard pressed to identify them.  
  
His attention was finally drawn back to the gate guards when he heard his family name.  
  
“So what do you think about the little Hyuga?” the one who had smoked too many cigarettes was saying.  
  
There was a pause and Neji thought he heard the scrape of a canteen opening and closing. “I don’t know. She was standing awfully close to that Aburame boy.”  
  
“Yeah, Maki, but we have to find a way to prove they did the nasty.”  
  
Careful not to make a sound, Neji rose from his hiding spot.  
  
“Hmm. I wonder if the boy can be bought.” This was the other old Genin, the one with the Mist Country accent. From his position on the wall above them, Neji could now see that he had a stringy blonde ponytail.  
  
“Now if we paid the boy to tell us if he popped her cherry, what would be the use of us betting money on it, you idiot?” This one, forehead protector surrounding an egg-bald head, elbowed his friend in the ribs for good measure.  
  
“This was a stupid bet,” the first one complained. “How in the hell are we ever going to find this out?”  
  
Neji quietly activated the Byakugan. This was an unusual angle from which to evaluate and enemy, but he was able to observe that Mist Country had broken his collarbone recently. The one with the cigarette voice appeared in fine health, though his muscle was beginning to run to fat. Neither was in his prime.  
  
“Why don’t you go knock on those big gates and ask her, Maki?”  
  
“Or you could ask me.”  Both men started when Neji appeared in front of them.  
  
It was almost comical to watch them take in his white eyes. Almost.  
  
“Hyuga-sama!” Mist Country began. Though he wouldn’t have guessed it from their conversation, Cigarettes was smarter. Neji watched him eye the distance between himself and the closed gate.  
  
For once, the flowing Hyuga style did not come easily to him. Today, instead of gentle fists, he wanted to punch. Instead of precision strikes, he wanted blunt force. For the first time he realized that cartilage crushed by a fist makes a satisfying crack and that blood beneath fingernails lingers for days.


	4. Acacia

  _I am constant as the northern star,_

_Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality_

_There is no fellow in the firmament._

_\- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar_

  
What started out as simple consideration, ended up a matter of pride.  He supposed he should be thankful that at least Hanabi had been left outside. Hiashi had pointedly shut the door before she could follow the three of them into the office. Now the older man sat at his desk with Hinata standing uncomfortably beside him. When they had entered, Hinata had moved to stand in front of the desk, as if to be reprimanded, causing her father to bark her name and gesture sharply. Neji had quickly averted his eyes from her subsequent blush and hesitant, “I’m s-sorry.”  
  
Neji stood across the big desk from them and bowed respectfully.  
  
“You wanted to see me, Hiashi-sama.” This statement was more a formality than anything. They all knew what this was about.  
  
“It has been brought to our attention that you were involved in an altercation with two of Konoha’s Genin.” Hiashi’s words were terse, his eyes fixed on Neji. Hinata focused all of her attention on an unremarkable spot on the tatami.  
  
Neji nodded.  
  
“Explain yourself.”  
  
Now was the time to carefully choose his words.  
  
“I considered the gate guards’ topic of conversation offensive,” he said stiffly.  
  
“So offensive that you had to deal with it yourself instead of reporting it to your superiors?”  
  
“Which superior? You or the Hokage?” he had wanted to ask.  
  
Instead, Neji just returned his uncle’s cold stare. “Yes, sir.”  
  
“And what exactly was it that you found so offensive that you felt you had to ignore my orders, break the shinobi protocol of this village, and send two of its Genin to the hospital when there is a war on?”  
  
“I do not feel that what was said is relevant, sir.”  
  
He felt Hinata’s eyes on him and glanced at her. Her body language was easy enough to read. She was pleading with him to say more, to cooperate.   
  
Hiashi’s gaze was piercing. “I didn’t ask you what you feel, Neji. I asked what was said.”  
  
  
“I would rather not say.  I’ve admitted to disobeying orders and I am ready to accept my punishment.”  
  
He wished Hinata would stop looking at him like that.   
  
Hiashi surprised him then by turning to his daughter. “What would you do if you were in my situation, Hinata? One of your Branch House subordinates is withholding information from you, the head of the clan. For all both of you know, this information could prove vital.”  
  
Hinata’s gaze darted back and forth between them. It bothered him, just a little, that he was part of the reason she was so nervous. He studied a house plant across the room, so that there would only be one set of stern white eyes on her.  
  
So he was surprised when he heard her speak up.  
  
“I-I trust Neji,” she said. “He is called the genius of the Hyuga Clan for a reason and if he is going to be my councilor, I will have to trust him. Besides, he was not lying when he said he believed what was said is not relevant. And by the way he clasped his hands behind his back and his eyes moved up and to the left when you asked him what was said, I can see that he was recalling the incident and becoming angry about it.” She seemed to gain confidence as she continued. Neji was certain this was the longest speech he had ever heard her give her father.   
  
“All of these factors, combined with Neji’s understandable fear of the cursed seal,” he stiffened, but she was pointedly not looking at him, “leads me to conclude that his altercation with the two Genin resulted from a personal conflict.  In other words, if I were the clan head, I would decide that this is none of my business.”  
  
“Very good.” Hiashi leaned back in his chair. “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” He took both of them in with a sweeping glance and they both nodded deferentially.  
  
“I have decided that your one week reassignment from the ANBU squad to guard duty is a sufficient punishment. I will not add to it. But I do suggest using those long hours guarding Konoha’s gate to reflect on the consequences of letting your personal life interfere in another mission for your Clan.” His pointed gaze left Neji with no doubts about what those consequences would entail.  
  
“Sir.”  
  
“Good afternoon, then.” Hiashi nodded dismissively.  
  
The courtyard was bright after the gloom of the office, and the first thing he noticed was Hanabi practicing her taijutsu in the courtyard. He noted that though she seemed to be in the middle of one of her forms, it was an uncommonly warm day for spring, and she had yet to break into a sweat. Of course, there was nothing he could say to the Hyuga Second Daughter about spying.  
  
Hinata followed him out of the office. He listened to her soft footfalls on the wooden walkway.  
  
“Neji-niisan, you’re bleeding through your bandages.”  
  
He raised his hands to confirm the dark red blotches on the cloth around his knuckles.  
  
“Thank you, Hinata-sama.” For some reason, he hid his hand behind his back, out of her sight.  
  
“I could-” she began and stopped. He had stopped walking and turned to her. A Branch House member never turned away from a Main House member while they were being addressed.  
  
“If you want, that is, I could give you one of my salves for it. And dress the wounds again.”  
  
“As you wish, Hinata-sama.”  
  
“Only if you wish. It’s not a command.”  
  
He probably surprised them both when he nodded. Hinata smiled at him then. It was the same smile she had given Aburame Shino before standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, and the memory made Neji’s bleeding knuckles twinge. He almost made an excuse and retreated to his own rooms, but she had already turned around and was leading him toward her garden. When she stopped and waited for him to catch up and walk beside her, he did.   
  
He had never been inside Hinata’s garden shed before. Of course he had noticed the additions to it when she took it over – a new coat of paint, a different wreath of flowers on the door in every season. And then there were the people coming and going.  When Hinata was home there was usually a steady stream of visitors. Like all of the Hyuga, he was aware that their heir dabbled in homeopathic remedies.  Unlike the rest of them, he had never knocked on her door.  This was partially because he was rarely sick or hurt, and partially because he never knew what to say when he found himself alone with her.  
  
He followed her inside and had to duck immediately to avoid a row of dried plants that hung from the rafters. She must have seen his shadow lurch because she turned around.  
  
“Sorry. I’m a bit behind. I’ve been away on missions and, well, you see.” She gestured vaguely around the room and he noted a similar line of drying herbs hanging from every inch of spare rafter space.  The whole experience smelled rather like walking into a closet full of potpourri, strong but not unpleasant. The shed was markedly longer than it was wide, and an oven and two large metal vats dominated its far end.  A half-sized refrigerator rounded out what he quickly identified as her work area. As for the rest, the portions of wall that weren’t lined with brimming shelves were dotted with hooks holding an assortment of gardening implements. A crooked rectangular table, once painted green, was pushed against one wall. One leg was shorter than the others and when he sat in one of the two cane-backed chairs he observed Hinata lift its corner and kick what looked like a discarded bathroom tile underneath the leg before laying out two china cups and saucers.   
  
“Would you like some tea?” Hinata asked from the stove.  
  
He told himself that it couldn’t hurt, since she seemed to be making some for herself anyway.  
  
Neji sat and watched her work. She washed her hands with a strong smelling soap and then removed two leather pouches from a shelf.  He saw her tap out several spoonfuls of dried leaves and place them in the tea strainer.  She deftly dodged the jutting shelves and several potted plants that sat on the floor, and soon the kettle was heating on the stove. He found it difficult to reconcile this girl with Hinata the mediocre kunoichi who ghosted around the Hyuga Compound.  
  
On his second sweep of the room – an ingrained habit - he spied a bedroll tucked inconspicuously behind one of the shelves. He was deliberately looking in the opposite direction by the time she approached him with the kettle.  
  
When they both had tea, she patted the table, and he showed her his hand, belatedly realizing that while he was watching her work he could have been removing the bandages. He started to loosen them with his left hand, but she stopped him with a soft, “Let me.”  
  
Her hands were sure and methodical, and she gave a low gasp when his knuckles were finally uncovered. Viewed through her eyes, the wound seemed much worse than when he had absent-mindedly wrapped them earlier that morning.  
  
“I don’t suppose you see many split knuckles around here.”  
  
She looked up at him when he spoke.  
  
“No,” she said seriously. “You’re my first case. Our style isn’t very conducive to bloody knuckles, is it?” She was already examining the wounds. “I wish you had come to me right away, I might not be able to stop these from scarring.”   
  
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered.  
  
“But I’ll try anyway.” She had retrieved a small ceramic pot from her refrigerator and set it on the table between them, along with a few cotton swabs.  “This will probably sting.”  
  
It did. Only pride kept him from curling his fingers in counterpoint to the pain.   
  
But the stinging of the ointment was soon forgotten. When Hinata went to wrap his wounds again, she took his hand in hers. Their palms touched.  Neji realized that, outside of battle, this was the first time someone had touched his skin in years.  
  
He wished again that she would stop looking at him like that.  
  
“Drink your tea,” she reminded. He was glad to have an excuse to do something, to take his eyes off the sight of her carefully winding the new bandages around his hand.  
  
“I don’t think we’re meant to take our aggression out in battle,” she said suddenly.  
  
“A shinobi should have a clear head in battle,” he affirmed flatly.  
  
“I didn’t mean shinobi, I meant us. Hyuga. I’ve thought about it quite a bit. I think our ancestors must have valued self-control more than anything.”  
  
They both stared down at his freshly wrapped knuckles.  
  
“I sometimes wonder if we are wise to specialize in a taijutsu technique that has been stylized over thousands of years.” She said this rather hollowly, and he did not dare look at her.  
  
“Some would say that practice has perfected the Jyuken,” he countered.  
  
She drew her tea mug in closer to her chest and he knew he had made her nervous again.  
  
“Maybe,” she said vaguely.  
  
His hitai-ate suddenly chafed.  
  
“I’m sorry, Hinata-sama.”  
  
She did not acknowledge the apology.  
  
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.” She must have noticed his closed expression. “I mean, I know that’s usually impossible. But maybe when we’re alone you could just call me Hinata?”  
  
Neji was very aware of the way her hair fell into her face when she looked down at the table, of how one corner of her lip curved into a tentative half smile when she was nervous.  
  
“I’ll try to remember,” he finally said.  
  
They both knew he would remember. They also both knew he would pretend to forget.  
  
()()()()()  
  
From her window, Hanabi watched the door to Hinata’s garden shed open and Neji step out. She saw Hinata follow him, saw her say something, saw her smile and finally saw her close the door.  
  
She saw Neji reach one bandaged hand out and touch one of the flowers that made up the wreath on Hinata’s door.  She saw him pause just a second too long, staring at the dried purple flower petal that had come off in his palm.  
  
Her father was still sitting at his desk when she found him. Hanabi was one of the few people with the nerve to call on him unannounced.  He never even looked up when she burst through the door.  
  
“Yes, Hanabi?” His eyes continued moving rapidly over a long scroll.  
  
Hanabi hurried to stand in front of her father’s desk, bowing low.  
  
“I have seen something I think you should know about,” she said rapidly, her face slightly flushed from running in the heat.  
  
Hiashi did give her his full attention then.  The happiest moment of her life had been the first time her father had looked at her with respect in his eyes.  She strove every day to see that look again.  
  
“Hinata and Neji-niisan just spent almost an hour together in her garden shed.  I am afraid she is trying to undermine you, Otousan.”  
  
Hiashi raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”  
  
She rushed on. “She’s trying to undermine your authority with the Branch Family. I see it from my window – they come to her whenever she is home. They leave with her teas and her salves. When you forbade her to charge for her services, it just made her seem more benevolent to them. She’ll gain their loyalty with our mother’s plants!”  
  
Her father’s answer had her shivering despite the cold day.  
  
“Hinata is their heir, Second Daughter.”  
  
He seemed to be waiting for her reply but she could not form words. Her feet felt glued to the tatami.   
  
“Do you not think it wise for her to gain their trust?”  
  
“I-I do,” she agreed faintly.  
  
Her bangs fell into her eyes when she looked down at her feet, but she dared not brush them off her forehead for fear of calling attention to what was not there.   
  
She ended her brief visit with the only thing she could say.  
  
“I would never try to undermine you, Otousan. Never.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
That summer brought a lull in tensions with the Sound Village. And on a Wednesday in May, Neji and Hinata both found themselves at home.  He had been given time off after a particularly grueling ANBU mission and she had been replaced on her team by another medical nin in order to tend to Clan business. It had been rumored that the series of ceremonies were to mark the occasion of Hanabi’s sealing and subsequent pledge to defend the Main Family, but the Hyuga Second Daughter returned to the Academy in the fall with a defiantly bare forehead.   
  
As was often the case when she was home, Hinata was gardening.  The day Uzumaki Naruto returned to Konoha, she had help.  
  
“He takes his duty seriously,” one old uncle had remarked approvingly upon passing by Neji as he shouldered a basket full of weeds and carried it to Hinata’s compost heap.   
  
“The children are growing up,” agreed the elderly aunt who clung to his arm. “Seems like only yesterday Neji-kun and Hinata-sama were knee high to a grasshopper.”  
  
Unable to block out the old woman’s loud voice, Neji and Hinata made eye contact and shared a shy grin.   
  
“I swear when we saw him this morning I could have thought that Uzumaki boy was our Yondaime.  I don’t know what to think about…” her voice trailed off as the two got farther away.  
  
Neji heard Hinata drop her spade.  
  
It felt like déjà vu when he suggested, “You should go and see him.”  
  
“I-I wouldn’t know what to say.”  
  
Her whole body went taut with nervousness. The way she wrapped her arms around herself, the way she brushed her hair behind her ear told him everything he needed to know. Now that Naruto was back it was like he had never left.  
  
He suddenly couldn’t stand to look at her.   
  
“I’ll clean up here,” he said stiffly. “Go see him.”  
  
She hadn’t looked back as she left him there in her garden. Of course, he hadn’t expected her to.  
  
Not really.


	5. Jonquils

 

_She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd, and I lov'd her that she did pity them._

\- Shakespeare, Othello

  
Hinata and Naruto finally had that walk by the river. The one she had thought they were taking three years ago when Iruka was testing her mettle for the Chuunin Exam. She couldn’t help but smile when they passed the spot where Iruka-Naruto had pretended to drown.  
  
Naruto was unusually subdued beside her, but he turned to her when she smiled. The full weight of his attention was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.  
  
“You don’t smile much,” he remarked, in a voice much deeper than we he had left Konoha. She thought she would never get used to it, or to the extra inches of height and the way the baby fat had melted from his cheeks.  
  
“Neither do you, since you’ve been back,” she heard herself saying. She glanced at him, trying to gauge whether he found that as incredibly forward as she did, but he just shrugged. A few minutes of silent walking passed before he turned and looked at her harder.  
  
“Wait… Hinata, is that why you backed me up in there?”  
  
It had been the most intense shinobi meeting either Chunnin had ever attended, culminating in Naruto and the Fifth Hokage roaring at one another over the heads of two dozen brand new and terrified Academy graduates.   
  
“How could you forget?” Naruto had asked, his face coloring with anger.  
  
The Hokage’s mouth had been a thin white line.  
  
“How could _you_ forget that Orochimaru nearly killed you? No, Naruto. No. You can’t just blaze into Sound. It’s idiotic.”  
  
“But-” he had begun.  
  
“I don’t care how well you’ve planned it, Naruto. It’s suicide. Nobody would volunteer for something like that.”  
  
Hinata had placed a hand on his arm and both he and the Hokage had turned to look at her.  
  
“I-I would go.”  She had even resisted the urge to hide behind her hands when the eyes of almost one hundred people simultaneously fell on her. Only Neji, she noticed, had kept his gaze resolutely forward throughout the entire exchange.  
  
Now, standing on the banks of the Nakano River with Naruto, she wondered where that courage had gone.   
  
The water today was swift-moving and muddy brown, reminding her of something her mother had once said.  
  
“I just-” she began, then started over again, haltingly. “You helped me. A lot. During my first Chuunin exam.”  
  
Naruto did smile then. “Yeah. We were all pretty young back then, weren’t we? Hey!” He seemed to brighten up. “I remember that ointment you gave me. That was good stuff!”  
  
She examined his hands and indeed there wasn’t a scratch on him, not even the tiny scars from the nicks and cuts every shinobi sustains in day to day training. Odd.  Reverting to her healer’s mindset, she turned his hands over to examine the palms, but he easily removed his hands from her grasp and wiggled his fingers at her, as if to reassure her of their continued mobility.  
  
“Have any more of that stuff? It came in handy.”  
  
“Yes,” she had answered him a bit more confidently. “I make it. I’ll bring you some. But… I don’t know where you’ll be.”  
  
He had grinned. “How about you bring it to me tomorrow afternoon when I take you out to eat ramen?” He must have mistaken her startled look, because he quickly amended, “Or whatever else you want to eat. My treat!”  
  
“Sure, I’ll… just bring it to you then.” She had glanced at him out of the corner of her eye only to see him scratching the back of his head sheepishly. This gave her cause for another small smile. And then he grinned back. For the first time, there on the banks of the Nakano River, Hinata felt what it was like to get something she truly wanted.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Craft Street was easy to find in any village because of the incessant noise of hammers and saws combined with the more subtle scents of freshly cut wood. Though always busy, it wasn’t an everyday stop like the main market; people generally only visited the wood-crafting district to commission furniture or hire a carpenter for building or repairs.  
  
Her father spent the day there twice a week, and Hanabi was determined to find out why.  After all, Hanabi always received the highest marks in her class in Stealth and Information Gathering.  
  
  
()()()()()  
  
Naruto and Hinata had lunch together once and even then she had been sure to declare loudly in front of a group of Branch House gossips that he had simply been thanking her for the ointment. She knew that if she were seen with him too often that her father would forbid all contact.  
  
He had acted truly disappointed when she said she could not see him again.  She had surprised them both when she suggested an alternate way for them to be together.  
  
Hinata always felt a slight thrill when she passed him in town, no matter that she had to school her features into a mask of perfect indifference. They would offer a formal greeting because it would be even more suspicious if they completely ignored one another. What got her through her days was the knowledge of how she would spend her nights.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Across the Nakano River and set apart from the village, the Hyuga Compound forms the Northeast corner of Konoha. This leaves the Hyuga with the responsibility of guarding a large section of the village walls, though this is hardly a cause for worry.  An intruder would be quite foolish to try to enter the town past the patrols with their ever-watchful Byakugan.  Periodically through the years, village council members have expressed concern that one Clan is in charge of so much of the village’s perimeter. The agitator is always discreetly reminded that Konoha was built around Hyuga and not the other way around. In truth, most Konoha residents live their whole lives never seeing the inside of Hyuga’s walls.  
  
Two guards are stationed at the Compound’s front gates, and two additional two-man patrols roam the perimeter at all times. With their Byakugan activated the entire compound is under constant scrutiny.  
  
Hinata realizes that she is putting her branch house cousins Tetsuo and Yumino in a difficult spot by raising her finger to her lips as their patrol passes and then vaulting the wall into the forest. They will be in trouble if she is caught, but for once in her life, she is selfish. She knows she should feel guilty, and she will. But not tonight. Tonight belongs to her and Naruto.  
  
After walking alone for a few minutes, she activates her Byakugan.  Her heart speeds up, as it always does, when she spots Naruto’s familiar chakra pattern in the branches of a tree.  
  
Without a word, he drops down beside her and takes her hand. Over the preceding weeks, she had memorized the feel of his calluses against her palm.  
  
They do not need light as they slip through the forest. She lets him take the lead while she keeps watch for Konoha patrols with her Byakugan. Of the places they meet, the shallow lakes that dot the village perimeter are some of Hinata's favorites.  
  
“Do you think this lake has a name?” he asks her later. It is high summer, and the air is heavy with humidity even long past midnight. They sit side by side on one of the large flat rocks at the lake’s edge, close together so that their low voices can be heard over the night sounds.  Naruto has his sandals off and he is dragging his toes through the water. The first night he took her there he tried to get her to swim. He has still never accepted her shyness about water. Tonight her sandals are beside his on the rock, but she sits hugging her knees, her bare feet dry.  
  
She considers his question seriously. “I’ve never heard a name for any of these smaller lakes. But it probably does.”  She looks forward to the rare times when he gets like this.  So much of their late night meetings are spent talking of his plans to recover Sasuke. She admires his determination, and wants to help, but the intensity in his voice whenever he speaks of his teammate just makes her sad more than anything.  Even as she secretly disagrees with him, she knows she would do anything to make him happy.   
  
When she isn’t helping him plot, he tells her stories of his travels – of Sasuke’s terrifying brother or about how he stood by two of the legendary Sannin to fight a third. He asks her questions sometimes, and she answers tentatively. Most nights, he lets this pass, but some nights he won’t abide it, just like he won’t abide her fear of water.  
  
Their best times, though, are when he forgets Sasuke altogether. On nights like these, she again sees traces of the mischievous prankster inside the indomitable man she always knew he would become.  His too-loud laugh and cheeky grin are comforting in the darkness.  
  
“What do you think it’s called?” Naruto asks then. He lies back on the rock, hands behind his head, and the admonishing voice in her mind is not  enough to keep her from appreciating the way his black shirt rides up to expose a swath of tan stomach.  “There are all these big white rocks around it. White Rock Lake?” He makes a face. “Eh… Probably not.”  
  
“It’s probably had a dozen names,” she muses. She tears her eyes away from him and looks out across the water, noting out of habit that it is a very dark blue in the moonlight.  “I think people name it then forget about it. Then some one else discovers it and names it again.”  
  
He looks at her then, a drinking in with his eyes that always makes her feel like the only other person in the world.  
  
“You know, I’ll bet you’re right, Hinata-chan!”  She smiles slightly at that. Aside from her teammates, he is the only person who addresses her that way.  
  
“You know what?” He grins then, displaying lots of dimple and straight white teeth. “We should name this lake. What do you want to name it?”  There is a splash as he jumps up. Now she is looking up at him standing over her on the rock. She has never seen anything more beautiful than his face outlined in stars.  
  
“Lake Konoha?” she says lightly. She is not going to spoil this mood, not now.  
  
“Nah, too common.” He laughs – an infectious sound – and then reaches out to help her up. His large hand is dark against hers. They both regard the contrast before she hops up beside him. He doesn’t let go of her as they both stand on the highest part of the rock and look out over the lake. She watches the last of the ripples arc then fade away, until the surface is a smooth blue sheet.  
  
“I know what to name it,” he says after a long moment, but the laughter is gone from his voice, and he is looking at her instead of the lake. Hinata has never known blue eyes could grow that dark. She can’t look away.  
  
“What?” Her voice is barely more than a whisper. His hand feels hot in hers. The chattering of the tree frogs grows loud in her ears.  
  
Naruto swallows. She has never seen him so unsure.   
  
“Lake Hinata.”   
  
Her breath catches in her throat. She feels a blush darken her cheeks.  She looked back across the water, only to have him reach up and grasp her chin. He gently turns her to face him.  
  
“Don’t look away, Hinata. You always do that.”  
  
So she looks at him instead.  He is a vibrant presence even in the darkness. In comparison, the forest fades into the background.  
  
She closes her eyes when his mouth covers hers. Naruto tugs on their clasped hands, drawing her closer to him. Never breaking their kiss, they come together, balancing against one another on the rock’s uneven surface. Naruto places the palm of his other hand on the flat of her back, rubbing small circles. She brings her free hand up to cup the nape of his neck, slipping two fingers inside his collar. His skin burns beneath her touch. They could be the only two people on earth, here in this secret place.   
  
She has never imagined that a kiss could be quite like this.  
  
When their mouths part, he rests his forehead against hers. She can never remember being any happier than she is at that moment.   
  
They are still holding hands – her right, his left – and he begins pulling her toward the water. She hesitates, planting her bare feet on the warm rock. He is already submerged to the ankles.  
  
“It won’t hurt you,” he says soothingly. “This is Lake Hinata. It’s your lake.” He is all smiles again, encouraging. He holds out his other hand and she only vacillates for a moment before taking it. It is easier this way, focusing on his familiar face instead of the dark water.  
  
He never breaks eye contact as, holding both her hands, he walks backward into the lake.  
  
He is wet to the knees by the time her toes touch water. She wavers then and he draws her to him again, catching her around the waist this time. In the water she feels lighter than she has ever felt before. If his arms weren’t around her, she might have floated away.  
  
“I’ve got you,” he say, low and soothing. She lets him walk her farther until the rippling water licks at her waist, then her chest.  
  
“I won’t let you go.” It is a whisper in her hair and she doesn’t trust herself to answer.  Maybe it’s because of the water, maybe because of the way she can still taste him on her lips, but she allows him to lead her.  
  
When she finally notices her surroundings again, the water is lapping at her shoulders, and her toes barely touch the bottom.  She has followed him to the center of the lake.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Naruto spent the obligatory year as a Chuunin, and then passed his Jounin exam on the first try. He was turned down the first three times he applied to ANBU as a missing-nin hunter, but not even the suspicious Hokage could justify turning down his fourth application.  Personnel were scarce and no one could deny that Naruto was one of Konoha’s most talented young shinobi.   
  
At the induction ceremony, Neji watched through tapered eye slits as his cousin’s boyfriend accepted his own painted mask.  
  
Naruto and Hinata’s relationship was a secret still, but the situation was easy enough to surmise when one knew how to look at Hinata – a skill very few people ever bothered to learn.  
  
He was happy for them.  
  
He would think of the preliminaries of their first Chuunin exam. Blood on Hinata’s chin, seeping between Naruto’s fingers.   
  
It had taken him years to realize what he lost that day.  
  
()()()()()  
  
The woman on Craft Street was called Sugino Nori. The only daughter of the most prosperous carpenter in Konoha, gossip held it passing strange that she never showed an inclination to marry or produce an heir.  From her hiding place, Hanabi often saw the woman tending to customers in the shop while her father worked out back.  She had black eyes, so heavy lidded that she appeared perpetually sleepy, and long black hair which she wore unbound except when she slept. Then she wore it in a loose braid. In the small hours of the night, its tip had been silky smooth against Hanabi’s cheek.  
  
Sugino Nori did not have many friends. What free time she had was spent in solitary pursuits. Though never formally educated, she liked to read and she owned a large number of books and scrolls which she stored in a red lacquered chest directly under her bedroom window. She also had a poorly tended bonsai tree, which sat on her windowsill.  Hanabi’s fingers would itch to trim the branches. Perhaps, she thought, smiling slightly, she had a bit of her mother in her after all.  
  
Sugino Nori had fallen off a wall and broken her ankle once when she was twelve, Hanabi’s age.  A nasty compound fracture, the bone had come through the skin. She still had a scar there, shaped like a crescent moon. She would shudder and clutch her sheets between her fingers when Hanabi’s father ran his tongue over that pale indentation.  
  
Sugino Nori was Hyuga Hiashi’s mistress of eighteen years.  
  
On Sundays, she liked to walk alone along the wild south bank of the Nakano River.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Uzumaki Naruto managed to shake his partner after completing one of his early ANBU missions. A week later he allowed himself to be spotted in a tiny trading post near Sound.  
  
Neji was not part of the handpicked squad sent directly by the furious Hokage to recover Naruto – or Naruto’s body.  
  
Instead he kept an eye on Hinata.  Her resigned sadness told him she had known everything.  
  
Still, he was surprised to be summoned to her garden shed in the role of her Councilor.  
  
“What do I do?” she asked quietly, holding a grimy curl of paper out to him. He recognized it as a scroll meant to be carried by a messenger bird. It was a convenient way to send a message, but also easy to intercept, and often frustrating because the tiny scraps of paper could only hold a few words.  
  
There were two faded lines, written with what appeared to have been an extremely blunt pencil.  
  
_His brother is dead._  
  
_He is not coming home._


	6. Snowdrops

_The eagle suffers little birds to sing._

-  Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

  
Reports filtered in quickly. There had been a disturbance in the Wave Country. Uchiha Itachi was dead, Orochimaru gone to ground, Uchiha Sasuke disappeared.  
  
Uzumaki Naruto returned to Konoha before his status could be upgraded from “missing-in-action” to “missing-nin.” Directly after he reported to the Hokage, he proceeded to the ANBU’s favored tavern where, as the proprietor confided to Neji, he drank for hours with the deliberate arm motions of a man looking to get stinking, sodden drunk.   
  
Hinata couldn’t come and check on him herself, of course.  
  
After taking money from Naruto’s wallet to settle his bill, Neji situated one of the shorter man’s arms around his shoulders. He scowled at the sickly sweet smell of alcohol – it wasn’t just Naruto’s breath, it was radiating out his very pores. For a few seconds, his head lolled into the crook of Neji’s neck. Just as he did everything else, Naruto had done a thorough job of getting himself trashed.   
  
“I’m fine,” he muttered as the tavern door swung shut behind them. As they neared his apartment he straightened up and muttered it again. Neji was surprised to see that he was telling the truth. Neji had never allowed alcohol into his body, but even in his inexperience he knew that going from falling down drunk to reasonably sober in the space of a few minutes walk was a remarkable feat. Naruto’s constitution really was phenomenal.   
  
Neji stopped abruptly in the middle of the street.  
  
“You seem recovered. I should go.” Though Naruto had done much for him, they had never had the chance to become close. Neji began to excuse himself without a goodbye.  
  
“Wait,” Naruto clapped a hand on his shoulder. “She sent you, didn’t she?”  
  
Neji glanced around, searching for witnesses to their conversation, though they both knew that, in Konoha, just because you could not see an eavesdropper did not mean they weren’t listening.  
  
An almost imperceptible tilt of Neji’s chin answered Naruto affirmatively.  
  
Naruto grinned a little at that.  
  
“Come up with me. I’ll warm you up some curry. It’s the least I can do.”  
  
Neji began to beg off but Naruto persisted. “I need to talk to you.”  
  
So he found himself following Naruto up a set of back stairs so rickety that he thought it might be wiser to leap over them altogether. Out of politeness, he took the stairs, but made sure to follow exactly in Naruto’s footsteps.  
  
There was no drunken fumbling with the keys – Naruto truly was sober. He opened the door and flipped on the light switch to reveal, well, exactly the type of apartment Neji would have expected of him. Naruto’s apartment was a typical bachelor pad, with more attention to the food in the refrigerator than the décor. He couldn’t say much. The notes on the wall and the magnets on the freezer door already proved the small apartment more personalized than Neji’s own quarters. Out of habit, Neji glanced all around the apartment before he stepped in. Naruto quickly crossed the kitchen and shut the bedroom door, concealing a mess.  
  
He scratched his head, grimacing slightly. “I’m scared to go in there. I’ve been away for awhile. Well, you know that.”  
  
Neji took up a position in front of the door, his arms folded across his chest. Naruto pawed through the freezer, finally emerging with two glass bowls filled with a brown mush.  
  
“Hinata,” he answered Neji’s questioning look. “She makes me curry and freezes it in bowls so all I have to do is heat it up. She’s something else, your cousin.”  
  
Neji nodded. Ah, of course. He wondered suddenly if she had been here, following Naruto’s footsteps up those dangerous back stairs.  
  
Naruto pushed some buttons on the microwave and then leaned back against the counter, his hands behind him gripping the inside of the sink.  
  
“You can sit down,” he offered.  
  
It would have been impolite to refuse, so Neji took one of the two chairs at Naruto’s square kitchen table.  
  
“You wanted to talk to me?” he asked.  
  
Neji saw Naruto flex his hands on the sink, suddenly uncomfortable.  
  
“Just to thank you, is all. Hinata said you cover for us. And I know that you could get into a lot of trouble for it.” He was scratching the back of his head again.  
  
“Try not to do that,” Neji said suddenly.  
  
Naruto’s blue eyes fixed on him, confused.  
  
“Scratching the back of your head. It gives you away when you’re nervous.”  
  
Naruto tilted his chin back and looked at him through slitted eyes, grinning a little.  
  
“I guess you would know, eh Neji?”  
  
Neji shrugged slightly.  
  
The microwave sounded then, and Naruto sat the first bowl in front of the Neji, along with a set of chopsticks.  
  
“Hinata is a great cook,” Naruto complimented. “I envy you. I guess you get to eat her cooking all the time.”  
  
Neji looked up from his bite of curry.  
  
“No.”  
  
He watched Naruto begin to scratch the back of his head again, and then stop himself. Neji pretended to focus on his curry instead, taking a small bite. He thought he recognized the taste of the mitsuba she grew in her garden.  
  
“It is good curry,” he conceded.  He found that he could imagine Hinata standing where Naruto was, washing her herbs in his sink, looking out the second story window at the village below. There would be curtains on the window, of course. Hinata placed a lot of importance on that sort of thing. Just like her garden shed, a place like this suited her much more than a ceremonial kimono and a cherry wood desk in a dark office hidden away inside the Hyuga compound.  
  
“And you’re welcome.”  
  
Naruto grinned at him, and then took a bite of his own curry.  
  
“Hey Neji,” he said suddenly. He was poking holes in the curry with his chopsticks. “Apologize to Hinata for me. For worrying her.”  
  
Neji nodded then watched Naruto fish around in his kunai pouch.  
  
“I bought her something,” he explained as he finally upended the entire container onto the counter. A small parcel wrapped in tissue paper came out along with several kunai, some scrolls and what looked like a bloody cloth. Naruto hastily stuffed everything back into his pouch before unwrapping the parcel.  
  
Neji saw the silver chain first, then the matching dove pendant. Its eyes were made of shiny black chips of stone. He remembered a dove in the Hyuuga courtyard when he was a child but brushed the memory aside.  
  
“I know it’s not much, but it reminded me of her.” Naruto was explaining. “And she can’t wear anything I give her because of… Well, obviously. So I thought she could pretend she bought this herself. Or she could say you gave it to her.”  
  
Neji did not remark on the impropriety of that suggestion. Naruto seemed anxious enough.  
  
“I’ll give it to her,” he assured the other man.  
  
“And tell her I want to see her tonight at the lake, but I’ll understand if she’s mad.” Naruto’s eyes moved to the window, to his view of Hyuga’s walls. “Tell her I’ll wait for her.”  
  
Neji already knew that he would.  
  
()()()()()  
  
ANBU headquarters, like any bureaucracy, provided a breeding ground for rumors. It became common knowledge that, after the mysterious incident with Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto took the toughest missions: the solo assassinations, the months-long deep cover assignments, and the volunteer-only tasks.  
  
Tales of his heroics – or, some would say, his recklessness - followed him back to Konoha. Naruto supposedly pitted himself against insurmountable odds, sometimes even endangering his teammates. Neji attributed the nastier rumors to the attitude the villagers had always held toward the orphan.  He would defend Naruto when he had the chance, citing his fellow ANBU’s inexorable urge to help people. Neji never forgot that Naruto had even thought to change Hyuga once - back when they were so much younger, before the ways of the world were so clear.  
  
Once in a while he still mentioned his ambition to become Hokage.  
  
Yes, some of the rumors were nasty; that was inevitable. But everyone conceded that Naruto had a demon’s luck.  And after years of proving himself over and over again, no one really expected it to run out.  
  
Then reports filtered in that the Hidden Village of Grass was holding a friendly blonde weapon smith’s apprentice for questioning as a possible Konoha nin.  
  
It was a game all the hidden villages played. As Yakushi Kabuto had proven, some spies lived double lives for years. Naruto had been sent to steal a set of documents regarding Sound’s movements subsequent to Orochimaru’s disappearance, and then exchange them with an altered set. Naruto, oddly enough in Neji’s eyes, had already proven himself at several of these undercover missions. Rumor had it that his natural charm tended to disarm people. Neji found that he could believe that.   
  
No ANBU squad was sent to retrieve Naruto right away. The Hokage would try diplomacy first. After all, Grass was ostensibly an ally of the Leaf. Catching them with the Sound-related documents put them into a sticky situation, practically broadcasting that they were in the midst of a backdoor deal with Orochimaru’s struggling village.  
  
Naruto was presumed to be imprisoned. Until five days later when a basket was tossed over Konoha’s west wall.  It contained the head of the Hokage’s envoy – his hitai-ate replaced with one emblazoned with the symbol of the Hidden Village of Grass.   
  
()()()()()  
  
They celebrated Hinata’s twenty-first birthday with a lavish family dinner. As before all major events since Hinata had attained her majority, rumors had flown that Hiashi would possibly step down that night. His father had done the same for him on his twenty-first birthday, after all. And this year, several of the Branch Family elders had been called into Hiashi’s office in the days before the dinner. As with years before though, nothing significant had happened at Hinata’s birthday dinner.   
  
Even if Hiashi had suddenly declared her the leader of Hyuga, Neji wasn’t sure Hinata would have noticed. He noted that she forgot to stand up during the toast and had to be prodded by a tug at her elbow from Hanabi. Then she had said “thank you” and sat down before all of the speeches were complete.  With his imprisonment, she seemed to have lost all the confidence she had gained in her time with Naruto. It was a tense night, and the family was finally dismissed after the customary five course meal. The Main Family – now consisting of only Hiashi, Hinata and Hanabi since Ojiisama had passed away last winter – stood first, and Neji watched Hinata retreat outside while Hanabi followed her father to their private quarters within the main house.  
  
This would be the first time Neji was able to speak with her since her… since the envoy’s head had been found.   
  
He wasn’t sure what made him follow her footprints through the frosted grass, or knock on the door to her garden shed, but he was surprised when she opened it right away, as if she had been waiting on the other side of the door, and then stood back to allow him to pass her.  
  
He had been inside her shed a handful of times since the afternoon she had applied her salve to his injured hands, but mostly the small space remained her solitary domain. Today he did not have to duck to avoid drying herbs hanging overhead. So deep in winter, he supposed she had them all put away. Nevertheless, the whole place still smelled like potpourri.  
  
“I wanted to make sure you were holding up all right, Hinata-sama.” He stood in the doorway.  
  
She smiled faintly then. He noticed that her eyes didn’t really focus on him.  
  
“I was just putting some tea on,” she said quietly.  “There’s plenty. I’ll hope you’ll stay.” He spied a mortar and pestle on her sideboard next to the sink and he watched as she crossed the room and put it away. The shed was as impeccably neat as he had ever seen it. After secreting the pestle in a cupboard, she looked around for a moment, as if at a loss. Her lavender formal kimono seemed distinctly at odds in the unremarkable room.  
  
“For a moment,” he agreed.  
  
She finally looked at him then. Her wobbly smile grew a bit stronger.  
  
“Sit, Neji-niisan. Let me serve you.”  
  
“It’s your birthday, I should serve you,” he protested.  
  
Hinata ran a pale hand through her short hair.  
  
“I’m afraid I made a fool of myself back there. I was… distracted.” Both their gazes turned toward the main house.  
  
“I don’t think anyone noticed,” he lied.  
  
The kettle whistled then, and she served the tea. It was different from the tea she had given him that afternoon years ago. Better. He told her so.  
  
“Do you think so? I’ve been experimenting again.” She blew on her tea. “I’ve had a lot of free time lately.”  
  
Hinata was rarely allowed on missions anymore.  No one argued with Hiashi that an unmarked Hyuga was too valuable to risk in the current political climate.  She was assigned to the hospital almost continuously now. And Naruto was often gone.  
  
“The last time we did this, you had bloody knuckles,” Hinata suddenly echoed his earlier thoughts. “I never asked you if they scarred.”  
  
Scars he was proud to bear.  
  
“I never noticed,” he lied. If she realized the deception, she didn’t let on.  
  
“Well, let me see.” Abruptly their mugs were pushed across the table and she was reaching for his right hand. “I remember the right one was worse. The one you always keep wrapped. Let me…”  
  
But he pulled his hand away and undid the tape himself. There was no point in allowing her to touch him this time. He was not hurt.  
  
Soon enough his hand was uncovered, revealing a thin web of scar tissue over the two most prominent knuckles.  
  
“Oh! It did scar!” She frowned, seeming to take it as a personal affront. He quickly retied the bandages.  
  
“They don’t bother me,” he said calmly.  
  
“I still wish you had come to me sooner,” she admonished.  
  
He took another sip of his tea, looking into his cup instead of her eyes.  
  
She stood up then, and went over to window. She pulled aside one of the curtains – they were yellow, with flowers – and pressed her fingertips against the frosted glass. If she could see outside at all, he knew she could only see the inner wall, or maybe a corner of her garden. He supposed it might be the action of looking out a window that comforted her. He had already decided that if she wanted to talk about Naruto, she would bring him up first.  
  
“I wonder if he’s warm tonight,” she asked the pane of glass. Neji watched her trace a tendril of frost with her index finger.  
  
Neji doubted it. It seemed kinder to keep silent.  
  
“I’ve been to Grass,” she continued. “It gets colder there in the winter than it does here.”  
  
He watched her square her shoulders. She looked small and cold against the black window.  
  
It made him want to touch her. He wrapped both hands around the tiny tea cup instead.  
  
“If anybody can escape, he can.” Neji realized that he had little practice at words of reassurance. “Naruto is lucky that way.”  
  
“I think he’s given up on finding Sasuke,” she said quietly, still looking out.  
  
Neji arched an eyebrow. They were not exactly close, but he and Naruto had been paired together on several missions in the last few years. He had never heard Naruto mention his missing teammate.   
  
“He was still looking for Uchiha Sasuke?” he pressed.  
  
“If it’s the last thing he does,” Hinata answered a bit tightly. He wished he could see her face. Her tone was difficult to read.  
  
Something made him stand up and join her at the window. He was right. The only thing they could see was the reflection of the light inside. He took her empty tea cup from her hands and refilled it, then brought it back. She looked up at him when she wrapped a finger around the handle. Then she turned back to the dark window.  
  
“My mother committed suicide.” Her back was to him again. Her breath frosted the glass.  
  
Still standing behind her, Neji nearly dropped his own cup.  
  
“It is said that Himiko-sama’s death was an accident,” he finally contradicted.   
  
“It is said that,” she agreed mildly. She turned to face him again. She looked somehow more solid than she had all night. “But it’s not true.”  
  
“Why…?” He meant “Why are you telling me?” but she took it to mean something else.  
  
“I don’t know why, exactly. Why does anyone sew stones into the lining of her favorite yukata and walk into a river?”  
  
Neji couldn’t meet her eyes.  
  
“I have guesses. But I think…” she continued. “I think that a person can die of failure.”  
  
Her eyes were steady on his while he digested her words.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, a bit feebly to his own ears. “Himiko-sama was always kind to me.”  
  
“She was a kind woman,” Hinata said distantly. Her fingers were on the frosted pane again.  
  
“I should go.”  
  
“Or you could stay. Just for awhile.”  
  
So he did.  
  
It was past midnight when he left her. They sat for hours, drinking cup after cup of tea. Sometimes talking quietly, sometimes just sitting together like parents waiting up for a child out past curfew.


	7. Peonies

_The course of true love never did run smooth._

_– Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream_

  
Naturally, the Godaime had taken the head of her emissary tossed over Konoha’s walls in a basket as a sign of war from the Hidden Grass. So when a messenger from that village arrived the next day, a flag of truce in her hand, it was hard to say who was more surprised – the three Genin gate guards who greeted her or the Grass envoy when three masked and hooded ANBU restrained her just outside the city gates.  
  
Neji busied himself at ANBU headquarters that day, waiting for news. Hinata did not ask him to do it this time. She didn’t have to.  
  
By the end of the night, Neji could report to his cousin that the Hidden Village of Grass disavowed all knowledge of the attack on the Leaf’s emissary.  
  
The next day, spy reports had placed two Sound nin between Konoha and Grass. Apparently, the Hokage’s envoy had never arrived at his destination and Sound was responsible for sowing the dissent between the two allied villages. Under pressure, Grass – a small village in a small country without even a Kage - finally admitted to their secret dealings with Sound.  
  
By the end of the week, Neji was part of the team that traveled to Grass to escort their erstwhile prisoner home.  
  
Neji had always served two masters – Hyuuga and Konoha.  
  
But when he brought Naruto home, he brought him home for Hinata alone.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Neji spared a final glance for his opponent before leaving him there at the base of the tree. Three strategically blocked tenketsu and then a chakra push had overloaded his heart.  
  
Neji took a position in the trees and quickly found Naruto just forty meters to the south, backing his opponent toward the edge of a stream. The second Sound-nin was quick, but Naruto was quicker.  There was no traction on the bank, and the Sound-nin’s heel slid in the mud before she could plant her feet. Neji watched Naruto crowd her.  He didn’t use the distraction with the mud to knock her legs from under her, probably aware that he could just as easily be caught in the same trap.  
  
One _this_ day, for once, Naruto was being cautious. It almost got him killed.  
  
Suddenly, instead of trying to reestablish her footing on the bank, the Sound-nin bent her knees then propelled herself backward, into the water. She hadn’t bothered with chakra to her feet, and the shock of her dive made a sizeable splash.  Neji saw the seals she formed through the silhouette of Naruto’s body – Horse, Tiger, Horse, Monkey.  
  
The Sound-nin had completed her jutsu and tendrils of water crept up over the bank, soon they would cover Naruto’s planted feet. Neji stealthily advanced on their location. What was Naruto’s plan?  He was trying to get to her, Neji suddenly realized.  But he wasn’t moving. Then he saw the dark spots on Naruto’s clothes. The splash. Somehow she had had paralyzed him with the water. He suddenly recalled the mission report, the minor detail that her grandmother had been from the Water Country and how the hell could he have failed to realize this?  
  
From his new angle, he could see that Naruto’s eyes showed a bit too much white around the edges. His limbs moved, but as if he were walking through cotton. Too slow. Neji gathered chakra in his feet, preparing to spring. The Sound-nin was not aware of him. It would be simple to close her vital tenketsu just as he had done to her companion. It would be nothing.   
  
It would also be simple to hesitate. To arrive one breath too late. An unfortunate mistake.  
  
It could happen to anyone.  
  
The Sound-nin’s face was screwed up in intense concentration as the water crept up Naruto’s legs like a living thing.  
  
The grown man in front of him was the same boy who had promised to change Hyuuga all those years ago. He did not have a spiteful, selfish voice in his head and that would allow him to consider hesitating to save a friend. And that was the difference between them.  
  
He sprang.  
  
()()()()()  
  
“That was a close one, eh Neji? I guess you were right about paying attention to all the information in the Bingo Book.” Naruto rolled his shoulders until they popped. The sound made Neji wince.  
  
“I’ll take care of both bodies,” Neji offered.  The woman had died half in the water, half on the bank, making her dead weight unusually heavy. “You should hurry, there isn’t much time.”  
  
Rain had begun to fall and Neji realized with a chill that the overcast weather had been a  part of the Sound-nin’s plan all along. Still, Naruto’s usual grin was back in place, the brush with death seemingly forgotten. “Hey, they can’t start without me, right?”  
  
In response, Neji hoisted the second body onto his other shoulder.  
  
Naruto rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Fine. I hear you. Don’t be late yourself.”  
  
Neji watched through the tapered slits of his eagle mask as Naruto disappeared into the rain.  
  
()()()()()  
  
When Neji was four years old, his father disappeared one day and never came back. One morning Hizashi was drilling Neji on the most basic forms of Jyuken, the next his uncle Hiashi was solemnly placing his father’s gleaming hitai-ate in his small hands.  
  
Later, when he was old enough to understand such things, Neji promised himself that he would never again miss the events that would change his life.  
  
He was a Hyuga, after all. What was the use of possessing the Byakugan if you turned away and did not see? When next his life changed for the worse, he vowed that he would watch with wide open eyes.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Neji is very late. He has taken the time to change into a regular Jounin uniform so that he could show his face in the tourist town. For the most part, the rain has washed the blood from his hair. Still, a hunk of something – he does not contemplate what – proves more difficult to remove, so he chops the entire lock off with a kunai, then adjusts his hair band to hide the flaw.  
  
He will not mar this moment with death.  
  
He sees the dress before he sees her face. The white formal kimono belonged to her mother. Neji realizes dully that -- though the dress fits her perfectly -- Hinata is already much older than Himiko-sama when she married Hiashi. She is almost the same age as Himiko-sama when she died.  
  
Hinata is nervous. Pale. More so than usual. He realizes that she is smiling at him though, and has been for a long moment.  
  
“Neji-niisan!” she beams. Her fingers flutter toward him but he steps back out of her reach.  
  
“I’m wet,” he explains needlessly.  
  
She hesitates, brings her fingers to her mouth instead.  
  
“Don’t!”  Eyes that supposedly see everything have somehow missed Haruno Sakura in the small dressing room.  
  
“You’ll muss your lipstick,” Sakura fusses. Neji frowns as he realizes that his cousin is indeed wearing petal-pink color on her lips. Her hair is also styled in the traditional bunkin-takashimada style, complete with gold combs and kanzashi. With a shinobi’s eye for utility, Neji briefly wonders about the practicality of all of this ceremony for a hasty elopement. But then he remembers that she is the Hinata who still wears a heart shaped pendant from her mother’s jewelry collection. Even in a tourist-trap of a town known for its vast number of wedding shrines, Hinata will have a traditional wedding.  The thought beckons his first smile all day.   
  
At the mouth of Eternal Happiness Street, a hawker’s booth had caught his attention. A pinch-faced woman with a dirty nose displayed the five traditional wedding gifts - dried cuttlefish, kelp and konbu for fertility. A bundle of long linen threads symbolizing the gray hair of old age. And finally a folding fan that, spread out, would represent increasing wealth.  
  
Neji holds the fan out to Hinata now. It is the only traditional gift he could bring himself to buy. There had been no occasion for the formal engagement party where such gifts are traditionally given. He spies a bundle of silver linen thread tucked into Hinata’s hakoseko and assumes Sakura had the same idea he did.  
  
Hinata accepts the fan from his hands with delight, as if it is a rare flower rather than cheap painted wood wrapped in rice paper.  
  
She really is the best of them all.   
  
Sakura is explaining to him how they let the couple whose ceremony was scheduled after theirs go first, because Hinata and Naruto would not hear of beginning without Neji. Hinata has migrated to the room’s one tiny window. She has her fingers pressed against the sill; her eyes are watching rivulets of rain amble down the glass.  
  
“I should go check on Naruto,” Neji says, and he thinks he may have interrupted Sakura, but he isn’t sure. He sees Hinata turn, her mouth open to speak, but he quickly shuts the dressing room door.  
  
Naruto is two doors down.  When Neji knocks, he opens the door immediately with a, “God damn, I thought you were the priest already. Get your ass in here.”  
  
Neji smirks at the mess Naruto has made of the room. He recognizes pieces of the regulation Jounin uniform littering the floor.  Naruto is wearing a blue kimono that darkens his eyes, or maybe that’s just nervousness. His hair is standing on end and a white stripe across his forehead exposes the fact that a hitai-ate usually rests there. His obi is tied incorrectly and as Neji watches Naruto unties it and yanks it from around his waist.  
  
“Shit, shit, shit.” Each repetition is more frustrated than the last. “It’s important to her that this is perfect!” His fingers fumble over the knots again, almost immediately botching the job.  
  
Neji silently takes the ends of the obi from his hands and in a few moments it hangs correctly.   
  
“Do something with your hair,” he directs.  His own sodden mane clings to his neck and shoulders.  
  
Naruto seems surprised at his own reflection in the mirror.  Neji watches, amused, as he tames his hair with a comb, and then allows himself the small vanity of turning left and then right to view his wedding kimono from different angles.  
  
“You’ll have to teach me that trick with the obi someday,” Naruto mutters. He tosses a crescent-eyed grin over his shoulder. “I’ll need to know when I become Hokage.”  
  
Neji agrees. He can almost pretend that they are preparing for another mission. Something undercover. Something with a low chance of success.  
  
A young priest knocks on the door and Neji and Naruto share a glance.  
  
“You know, if you were any other man, right now you would be telling me there’s always time to jump out the window,” Naruto teased.  His hands fiddled with the obi.  
  
“I would kill you first,” Neji says in what he hopes is a teasing, light-hearted manner.  
  
“No doubt,” Naruto agrees, and he is grinning again as he leads the way to the sanctuary. He rolls down the hall on the balls of his feet in a stance ready for fighting. But Neji realizes Naruto’s gait for what it is. He is happy. Ecstatic even.   
  
Neji thinks he can suddenly feel the weight of his own heart in his chest.  
  
They purposefully chose one of the smallest shrines. It is unadorned for the most part except for the altar dominating the room and the calligraphy scrolls on the wall denoting various well wishes. Benches provide seating for about a dozen or so guests, though of course, since Neji and Sakura are acting as the symbolic go-betweens, no one sits in the audience. They four and the priest are the only people in the world who know what is happening here at this moment in time.  
  
The grin on Naruto’s face when he sees Hinata in her wedding kimono outshines the candles in the sanctuary. They stand apart, to allow room for Kami-sama between them until they are joined, but when Hinata’s eyes meet Naruto’s there is no room for anyone else in that look.  
  
Sakura beams at the pair of them.  Her fair skin turns blotchy and Neji sees tears well in the corners of her eyes.  
  
Neji bows low during the ritual purification of the wedding party.  
  
The priest pronounces the four Konoha shinobi pure and Neji feels Naruto’s eyes cut to him. He doesn’t dare return the glance. At this point, laughing would be completely inappropriate.  
  
Next are the oaths to remain faithful and obedient to one another. Neither hesitate over their words, though Hinata’s voice is soft and does not carry. In contrast, Naruto’s oath sounds overly loud in the sepulchral space.   
  
Then comes the San San Kudo ceremony. The two of them never take their eyes off of one another as they drink sake from the three ritual cups. Still, the whole thing is all over and done with very quickly. Neji has never realized how fast a wedding truly is.  
  
Rings are slipped over knuckles, then. Naruto’s hands are huge compared to Hinata’s tiny ones, and he has trouble with the delicate maneuver. Instead of taking over herself, though, Hinata is patient and they all watch in silence as Naruto carefully slides the cheap silver band over her knuckle.   
  
Before Neji knows it, the priest is handing Naruto and Hinata their sakaki twigs to offer to the gods in the inner sanctuary.  Naruto places a hand on Hinata’s elbow as she spins her twig on the altar.  
  
Neji and Sakura receive their sakaki twigs next. He is the last to place his on the altar. It spins too hard, and for a moment he thinks it will fall, but it does not. It comes to rest against Hinata’s twig instead and for some reason he is ashamed.  
  
After Neji steps out of the sanctuary, the priest pours five cups of sake and they all echo his cheerful, “Kampai!” then drink. When the cups leave their lips, Naruto and Hinata are married.  
  
After, as they prepare to return home to Konoha and break the news, Hinata impulsively grabs Neji’s hands.   
  
Naruto is standing behind her, his hands possessively on her hips. Neji can count on one hand the number of times he has seen them together likes this, but it already seems like they have been married forever. They are comfortable. Familiar.  
  
“I’m truly am glad you were here for this, Neji-niisan.” She beams.  
  
When he was four he had brushed his thumb over the Leaf symbol on his father’s hitai-ate, leaving a small fingerprint on the gleaming surface. As small as he was, the metal plate had felt heavy in his hands. Now, he gently extricates his hands from Hinata’s grasp.  He doesn’t smile as he answers her, but then, he rarely does.  
  
“Hinata-sama, I wouldn’t have missed it.” 


	8. Marigolds

 

_A little more than kin, and less than kind._

_– Shakespeare, Hamlet_

  
  
The rain had evened out to a steady drizzle that promised to turn icy after the sun set. The four of them, Neji, Hinata, Naruto and Sakura did not speak much on the way home, though Naruto and Hinata stayed close, sometimes sharing small touches or private looks.  
  
The plan was to return to Konoha and break the news to Hiashi immediately after the wedding. Neji heard Hinata wish aloud that she could move her things to Naruto’s tiny apartment right away.  
  
He also noted how Hinata extricated her hand from Naruto’s shortly before they approached Konoha’s gates.  
  
“It’s best not to provoke my father,” she said. There was a note of pleading in her voice. Naruto had never been known for his restraint, of course.  
  
Sakura cut in before Naruto could answer.  
  
“I don’t think seeing you holding Naruto’s hand will provoke him any more than the fact you’ve married him.”  
  
Hinata turned her head and looked down.  It was an old gesture, one she did not use nearly as much. She had done it during their fight in their first Chuunin exam. It meant she was embarrassed. Sakura seemed to pick up on Hinata’s discomfort.  
  
“I just meant that… maybe seeing you two so happy together would soften the blow.”  
  
Konoha’s gates appeared and Neji ended the conversation with an abrupt, “I think not.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
They met their first opposition at the Hyuga gates. Neji immediately picked up on the patrol’s guarded expressions. Their cousin Tetsuo took a long, nervous drag on his forbidden cigarette at their approach. Normally, the sentries would stand aside and allow Neji and Hinata’s entrance.  Today, both guards kept up their positions in front of the closed gates.  
  
Hiashi knew.  
  
A tense second passed as the two groups regarded one another. Naruto broke the silence.  
  
“We are here to see Hyuga-sama.” Even _he_ sounded strained.  
  
Tetsuo’s eyes flickered regretfully to Neji as he replied.  
  
“We have been given instructions that Hinata-sama and Neji-san are to report to Hyuga-sama at once. All other visitors are to be turned away today.”   
  
The changes in Naruto were nearly imperceptible if one tried to pinpoint them individually. His fingers flexed minutely, his breathing quickened slightly, his eyes narrowed, he rolled onto the balls of his feet.  Suddenly, his stance transformed from relaxed to ready for anything. Both sentries sensed it.   
  
“Hyuga-sama does not allow trouble here,” the other sentry – a middle-aged aunt Neji had never known well – interjected.  An experienced shinobi, she focused her attention on Naruto, but never stopped checking her periphery.  “Hinata-sama and Neji-san are to report at once,” she repeated.  It was the monotone voice of a Hyuga Branch House member, but there might have been something in her tone that was almost apologetic.  
  
Naruto started to argue, but was silenced by Hinata’s hand, small and pale against his forearm.  
  
“Wait here,” she told him softly.  
  
“Hinata!”  
  
“I’ll be fine, Naruto-kun.”  
  
“You don’t know that.” Naruto’s voice was a husky growl, intimate. He gripped Hinata by the arms, pulled he close to him. Neji felt like an intruder in their conversation and he noticed Sakura studiously pretending to observe some river birds preen on the bridge railings.  
  
Hinata remained patient, once again extricating herself from Naruto’s grip. She smiled slightly at his scowling face, brushed a knuckle across his cheek. The action seemed to deflate him. He suddenly appeared very tired.  
  
“I am Hyuga. For one more day at least. Let me do this the Hyuga way. One last time.  Please”  
  
Naruto exhaled loudly and they all knew Hinata had won. Naruto bent down and kissed her then, and Neji was finally able to turn completely away.  
  
Tetsuo stepped aside and opened one of the gates.  
  
Even when the heavy gates closed behind them, Naruto’s voice carried. Rage tinged with a hint of hysteria.  
  
“But if he hurts you, Hinata, I’ll kill him.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
They were lead into Hiashi’s office, where, this time, it was Hiashi and Hanabi behind the desk. Neji reflected on the fact that he was the only one in the room who had never stood behind that desk to pass judgment and never would.  
  
There was something different about Hanabi. He observed her out of the corner of his eyes until he realized what it was. The fringe of bangs she always wore over her forehead had been brushed aside, revealing the smoothness there. She had tried to catch his eye, but he pretended not to notice her. Then he saw her run her pointed tongue over her top teeth when she thought no one was looking.  So both Hyuga sisters had realized their fondest wishes today.   
  
Hiashi regarded them both severely. First Hinata, then him. The silence in the office grew and stretched into a living thing.  
  
“I would never have expected you, Hinata, to make such a rash decision.” Hiashi used the same flat calm voice to order tea, to order executions.  
  
Since it was not a question, Hinata didn’t answer. Her fists were not clenched at her sides like Neji’s itched to do. In fact, she appeared perfectly serene. Resigned.  
  
“Of course you will be renounced as the heir to Hyuga,” Hiashi went on. “The precedent was set for this almost eight hundred years ago when Hyuga Haru eloped with a kitchen servant.”  
  
Hanabi’s eyes flickered to Hiashi then narrowed imperceptibly.  
  
“Any issue of the marriage,” Hiashi continued, “Will be fostered among the Hyuga if they carry the Byakugan.  Undoubtedly this will not be a problem as low-blood generally taints the gene that carries our ancestral ability.” He said this as if reading the back of a medicine bottle.  
  
Neji watched for Hinata to get angry, to defend Naruto, but she remained silent and serene.  He could not imagine standing by while the head of Hyuga threatened to take his child away, dismissed his spouse with a casual insult.  
  
But this, he realized, this was the difference between them.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Her mother had run her fingers through the trickle of water from the sink. Her hand had still been wet when she knelt down and took Hinata by the shoulders.  
  
_Water has no color._  
  
()()()()()  
  
“There is one more thing.” Hiashi had continued on when Hinata did not answer him. “Hinata, right now you are a danger to yourself and this clan.”  He held out a hand as if to take hers, but quickly turned it into a gesture of beckoning toward the door. “Come, and I will administer the mark.”  
  
Hinata actually took a step forward. Neji was so stunned that he almost let her take a second before he reached out to grab her arm. He did not know what he was thinking. Maybe that, though they couldn’t take all of the Hyuga guards, between the two of them they could at least escape into the village.   
  
He thought he managed to brush a fingertip against Hinata’s wrist before a searing pain stayed his hand.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Her fingers frozen in seal of the cursed jutsu, Hanabi ran her pointed tongue over the edges of her teeth again.   
  
Hinata lapsed from her resignation for the first time that night. She cried out, then reached for Neji who now lay writhing on the floor. Flecks of foam gathered at the corner of his mouth and his face was contorted into an expression of absolute pain.  
  
Hiashi grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her away. “He will hurt you.”  
  
He held his oldest daughter tightly until Neji’s convulsions stilled. It was the first time he had touched her in years.  
  
Still behind the desk, Hanabi’s chest heaved. The only sound in the room was her breathless panting.  
  
“He was reaching for her,” Hanabi suddenly declared. “I thought he would harm her.” Hinata and Hiashi regarded her over Neji’s prone body. “I thought he was going to hurt my sister,” she repeated.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Hanabi lowered her hands slowly.  
  
Hinata rushed to Neji’s side, checking to see if he had bitten his tongue.  
  
Hanabi stared steadily at Hiashi. Hiashi stared steadily at a point some twenty-five years in the past.  
  
The Hyuga have always prided themselves on their powers of observation, but truly, as in any life, moments of clarity are as rare as shooting stars or blue moons or abiding and faithful love.  
  
Despite having eyes that see everything, Hyuga often possess exceedingly peculiar blind spots.  
  
Hiashi realized then that he would never be the man his brother was, but it wasn’t too late to start trying.  
  
The tinny clang of a bell summoned two Branch House patrolwomen.  Both remained outwardly calm as they surveyed the scene, though Hiashi detected their nervousness through small gestures – the almost imperceptible tensing of muscles, the rapid movement of one guard’s tongue inside her mouth.  
  
Hinata made to follow as a still-unconscious Neji was loaded onto a stretcher, but her father stopped her by touching her hand again.  
  
“They know how to see to him. You can go to him momentarily. Wait a moment.” A pause. “Please, Hinata.”  
  
He wasn’t sure if it was the “please” or the second touch that stopped her, though she watched until her unconscious cousin was out of sight.  
  
Hanabi was still standing by the desk, one hand clutching the edge of the mahogany surface.  
  
“I’ve changed my mind,” Hiashi said without preamble, so suddenly that both of his daughters’ heads whipped around at the sound of his voice.  “Hinata, I know that you will not willingly endanger your Clan or your village. I have decided to allow you to remain unmarked unless such a time comes that you think you might pose harm to those most important to you. I know you will make the right choice. In that…In that you are your mother’s daughter.”  
  
Hiashi watched Hinata bow deferentially in acceptance of his decision. No one acknowledged Hanabi’s knuckles whitening where she gripped the desk.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Despite having eyes that see everything, Hyuga often possess exceedingly peculiar blind spots.  
  
It was then that Hanabi realized for the first time that her best would never be quite good enough to make him love her more than the ones that came before.  
  
The knowledge was like copper on her tongue.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Despite having eyes that see everything, Hyuga often possess exceedingly peculiar blind spots.  
  
Neji remembered how Hanabi ran her tongue over the edges of her teeth when she looked at her sister and surprised himself that this – upon waking up from his first experience with the cursed jinjutsu – was the first time he realized that there are things aside from cages that can imprison a man.  
  
Blinking slowly, Neji noticed an odd quality to the light and he realized that some thoughtful soul had placed a green shade on the window. Legend held that a green filter helped mitigate the migraine headaches that often occurred as a result of the cursed jinjutsu.  
  
So when Hinata entered the room, the wash of green light and the blurriness of his vision made it seem like he was looking at her through sea glass.  
  
Twenty-five years of instinct screamed for him to stand up when the Heir entered the room, but his legs refused to cooperate. She walked toward him slowly and it was like she was swimming.  
  
There on the edge of the bed, clutching the edge of the mattress to stop the spinning in his head, Neji sat as still and silent as if the eighth bird had just landed on his outstretched finger. Her pale hands came up and encircled his neck. With no hesitation, she untied the knot on the band that held his hair away from his eyes, removed it and sat it on the bed behind them as gently as if it were made of glass. Neji couldn’t have felt more exposed if he had been naked in front of her and he had to stifle the impulse to grab her wrist when she reached for him again. Instead, he remained motionless as she ran the pad of her thumb over the jinjutsu.  He watched the near imperceptible movement of her wrist as she used the tip of one finger to trace each fork of the hated symbol.  
  
If it hadn’t been branded into his forehead before, it was now.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Despite having eyes that see everything, Hyuga often possess exceedingly peculiar blind spots.  
  
Her cousin looked up at her in an unguarded moment and there it was, written in silver in his eyes.  
  
Hinata realized then, for the first time, that when one looks through Hyuga eyes, one sees absolutely nothing.


	9. Carolina Rose

 

_This was the unkindest cut of all._

_– Shakespeare, Julius Caesar_

  
  
For the six hours between intelligence reporting Hinata’s elopement and her father’s startling decision to leave her sister unmarked, Hanabi had been safe for the first time in her life. Until she had overstepped herself. Which just proved what she already knew - even after executing a perfect kaiten, the spinner is still left in the same place where she began.  
  
Still, she mused - as she lay on her back, arms folded behind her head, and allowed her former teammate to trail kisses down her taut stomach – because of Hinata’s choice, Hanabi was this much closer to becoming head of Hyuga after their father’s death. Though not quite close enough.  
  
The outcome wasn’t certain, and Hanabi’s life was built on uncertainties. No one was sure who would be the next head of their house; no one was sure whether Konoha should go to war with Hidden Grass; no one was sure whether to bow extra low to Hanabi or to make her a poultice for her forehead. And no one was sure if her mother had killed herself because she did not want baby Hanabi or...  
  
“Do you love me?” she asked Konohamaru suddenly. He was resting his head on her stomach now, drawing idle circles around her navel.  
  
He propped up on his elbows, looking up at her with trusting eyes. She was his first and only love. He thought he was hers.  
  
“Yes,” he answered simply. “I love you.”  
  
Hanabi’s life was built on uncertainties, so she was careful to cultivate sure-things.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Hanabi did not bother to hide how her lip curled in displeasure upon seeing Neji in their private council. After the ceremony that declared her the new Hyuga heir, her father had foisted her cousin on her as her Councilor, to serve her in the same way he had served Hinata.  
  
“He sees far,” her father had remarked. “That one always has.”  
  
Hanabi had never known her uncle Hizashi, but it was not hard for her to surmise what her father saw when he looked at his nephew. Neji was growing up to look remarkably like them, after all.  
  
She attributed her father’s leniency to this link.  
  
“He does not know his place,” she had disagreed, her rising voice in sharp contrast to her father’s implacable calm. “None of them know their place anymore.”  
  
The ceremony had been more like a funeral. Hanabi knew that she had never been a favorite among the lesser members of her Clan – the unwanted daughter, the girl that should have become one of them as soon as she was old enough for her first Byakugan.  
  
She watched them all, breaking thousands of years of tradition in the process. She often eavesdropped on them as they talked about her. And, once, about the woman who would have been her foster mother if she had been marked. After all, there would have been no sense in her living with the Main Family if on her third birthday she had been carved into just another homogeneous Branch House member.  
  
She was an old woman, this would-be mother, by the time Hanabi secretly sought her out. Through many walls, she would observe her doing laundry, or cooking or any of the other mundane day-to-day tasks that Hanabi supposed mothers did. She had children, a teenage son and a married daughter about Hanabi’s age. Her almost-sister apparently fought with her husband often, and she would run to her mother’s cottage, blotchy with tears. While Hanabi watched, they would sit at the kitchen table and the mother would take her daughter’ hands in her own, or pat her shoulder or sometimes even hug her.  
  
She would watch those scenes until the daughter left, until the mother turned out the light and went to bed. Sometimes she would even watch beyond that, observing the feeble eye movements indicating that her almost-mother dreamed. What a Branch House member could possibly dream about, she had no idea.  
  
Especially Neji. Despite her protests, her father insisted on including him in their hastily called meeting today and he stood beside her, as stiff and proper as ever.  
  
“Report to Hanabi,” Hiashi commanded her cousin Tetsuo. Her cousin had always been a nervous man, and now his fingers had been twitching toward his vest pocket as if craving a cigarette. He realized that they were all watching them and quickly dropped his arms to his sides.  
  
“It is Hinata-sama er… Hinata-san.” He nervously waited for Hiashi’s approving nod before continuing. “She’s…” he obviously turned the words over in his mind before proceeding. “…with child.”  
  
Mistaking Hanabi’s surprised stare he modified, “She’s pregnant.”  
  
“I know what ‘with child’ means,” she ground out. It gave her time to take in her father’s mild expression. There would be no clue there as to how she should react to the news. On the other side of her, her cousin Neji looked on. The pair of them were like blank-faced mirror images.  
  
She decided to buy time by assessing the situation further.  
  
“Is my sister well?” She directed the question at Tetsuo, but it was her father who answered. There might have been a swell of pride in his voice, like he was speaking over a lump in his throat.  
  
“She is having difficulty. Certain symptoms so early in her pregnancy are a good sign.”  
  
A good sign? A sign that there will be one more Byakugan user in the family. A user who would follow behind Hanabi as her heir until she produced one of her own. And her father would put her off every time she made mention of a match for herself. Even banished to her tiny house across the river, Hinata managed to invade Hanabi’s life. Their father had been right. Hinata was indeed their mother’s daughter.  
  
“This is cause for celebration,” her father added when Hanabi let the silence linger a few beats too long. Few would have noticed – few dared look her father in the face for extended periods of time - but the corners of Hyuga Hiashi’s lips had upturned in a barely perceptible smile.  
  
()()()()()  
  
For the first time in days, Hinata felt well enough to sit on the front porch and direct Naruto as he pulled weeds from her tiny garden. The four foot square plot of land was merely a shadow of her former garden in the Hyuga compound. The one she still thought of as her mother’s garden. One of the most beautiful quince bushes had even been planted by her great-grandmother, a noted flower gardener. Even though the small house she and Naruto had bought with their savings was all the way across the river from the Hyuga compound, she imagined the stink of all the burning herbs had lingered like a pall over her house for days.  
  
Of course, Hinata had gathered clippings from her vital herbs before she left home early on the morning of her wedding day. She was no longer the young girl ignorant of the cruel things people can justify doing to one another when they call it love.  
  
From her lounge chair on their wobbly porch, she cupped the slight swell of her belly with both hands and tried to smile when Naruto held up one of her immature rosemary plants and asked “Weed, right?”  
  
Ever since the first time she had spent a whole day in bed with “morning” sickness, she had known. The being inside her was approximately the size of a peanut, but its nucleotides have already bonded together in that prized sequence. Hinata may have been weak, but her genes were strong and somewhere, deep inside her body, microscopic Byakugan eyes were taking shape.  
  
She hasn’t said it out loud yet, because she fears what Naruto might do, though the redness in his eyes and the way he squeezes the bridge of his nose when he thinks she isn’t looking betrays the fact that he knows the truth, too. Just the day before he had brought her a brightly painted top from the market. The baby’s first gift.  
  
“I’ll kill every Hyuga there is before I let them take this baby,” Naruto whispered to her that night when he thought she was sleeping. But through her closed eyelids Hinata was staring at the top where Naruto had deposited it on the nightstand. In her mind, it was already faded, gathering dust. A toy no child would ever play with.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Several evenings later, Hinata found herself in a low-voiced argument with Naruto over who would pour the tea. The Hokage, her councilor Jiraiya, and Haruno Sakura had shown up out of the blue, bursting in with barely a knock at the door, and Hinata was embarrassed to receive such illustrious company in their reduced circumstances. She finally won, and Naruto sat at the table with their guests while she pounded herbs with her mortar and pestle. She had been in bed more than out of it with her pregnancy, and the state of her house and her herbs all told on her.  
  
The Hokage had impatiently pushed her carefully arranged centerpiece to the very edge of the kitchen table, and the combination of their low, serious voices and the stacks of papers Tsunade spread out before her, their kitchen soon took on the air of a war room. Though Hinata’s ankles ached, she refused their invitations to join them. When Sakura, who had been so solicitous during her pregnancy so far, dropping in several times a week to check on her condition, did not insist she take a seat, Hinata realized it was worse than she thought. She redoubled her efforts with the mortar and pestle, though the truth can’t be unsaid just because the listener covers her ears.  
  
Even over her frantic pounding, Hinata still caught Uchiha Sasuke’s name.  
  
No one noticed Hinata finally drop the mortar. Naruto had been sitting across from the Hokage, their heads almost touching as they conferred. Now he jerked back in his chair.  
  
“He’s dead, Naruto.”  
  
Outside their circle, Hinata clutched the pestle to her chest as her husband began to slowly shake his head.  
  
“No,” Naruto whispered. “It isn’t true.” Then a roared, “NO!” He jumped up, ready to fight anyone and everyone and Hinata crept back until her bare heels touched the wall.  
  
They were all on their feet. Hinata watched as Tsunade reached across the table and gripped her husband’s shoulders. Naruto suddenly went rigid.  
  
“Don’t. Touch. Me.”  
  
There was something then. Maybe something in his eyes, or the growl in his voice, like he had glass in his throat, that made the most powerful person in their village gingerly remove her hands from her husband’s shoulders and slowly fold them across her ample chest.  
  
“It’s true, brat,” Jiraiya said in a placating rush. “We have it from the most reliable of sources. His body lives, but its Orochimaru’s mind inside him now. I’m sorry, boy, but your friend is gone.”  
  
Hinata blinked and for some reason noticed again how startlingly blue her husband’s eyes were.  
  
He ran his hands through his hair, mussing it into frenzied spikes.  
  
“If you have a reliable source, then you know where he is. If you know where he is, then I can go end it once and for all.”  
  
The whole time, Sakura had sat quietly to one side of him, but now he grabbed her hand, pulling her closer.  
  
“I promised you I would do this.” He spared Hinata a glance. “As teammates.”  
  
The naked hurt on Naruto’s face when Sakura gently extricated her hand could have broken Hinata’s heart.  
  
“I absolve you of your promise. We were kids, Naruto. Just kids.” She softened her tone. “He’s never coming back, Naruto.” A charged pause. “He never was.”  
  
There was nothing to say after that, really. They left soon after, but not before the Hokage and Sakura subjected Hinata to a full examination.  
  
“You don’t need any stress right now,” Tsunade had opined significantly, loud enough for Naruto to hear where he still sat with Jiraiya at their kitchen table.  
  
But in the end, he had gone. Just like she knew he would. He had gone even though the mission had a low chance of success. He had gone even though the nin in command was none other than her own father. The Hokage had begged this special favor from Hyuga Hiashi, and apparently he had agreed that Orochimaru’s threat was serious enough to marshal the forces of the Hyuga Clan.  
  
On the nights he was gone she dreamed of dark water closing above her head.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Several weeks later, Hanabi awoke to a pounding on the door of her private suite.  
  
She was instantly up and alert. She had her underlings trained well enough that they would only interrupt her if the situation was direly important. With her father on his mission to capture the legendary Orochimaru, she ruled the Hyuga Clan with strict discipline and an iron will. She had already implemented several changes, and looked forward to her father’s return so she could demonstrate their efficiency.  
  
“What is it?” she called sharply.  
  
“It’s Hyuga-sama,” a timid voice reported. “He’s back and he’s hurt. It was a trap! One of Orochimaru’s poisons! He’s- they say he’s dying.”  
  
Hiashi lay on the tatami in the dining hall. His Byakugan was activated and the chakra coils around his eyes puffed out hugely. He thrashed wildly as if in the grip of the cursed jutsu, and several Branch House members gingerly attempted to hold him still. Two non-Hyuga nin --Hanabi surmised they had been on the mission as well -- stood over him. One began to babble frenetically as she swept toward them. She cut him off in mid-sentence.  
  
“Get out of my home! You are trespassing on Hyuga territory!” She turned from them, confident that her orders would be obeyed. “You,” she pointed to her cousin Tetsuo, “get my sister. She’s something of a healer. Everybody else, out!”  
  
“But Hinata…” Tetsuo began.  
  
Hanabi regarded her cousin with flinty eyes. Her father’s prone body, twitching more faintly now, lay between them. “Is what?”  
  
“Hyuga-sama gave me explicit orders to watch her.” He rushed. “She’s too sick to leave her bed.”  
  
“If my father dies,” she said evenly, “I will be Hyuga-sama.”  
  
It was all the incentive her cousin needed.  
  
And then they were alone, father and daughter.  
  
She looked down at him for a long moment, marveling at the reversal in their situation. In a flagrant breach of etiquette, she had failed to remove her slippers when she entered the dining hall, and now she prodded her father’s flank with her toe. His only reply was a soft murmur. He had ceased struggling altogether now.  
  
Hanabi sat down beside him, primly smoothing her yukata over her knees. With her Byakugan activated, she could see his heart beating wildly, though her inexperienced eyes could not detect the poison saturating his blood stream.  
  
The chakra coils around his eyes were still inflamed, and Hanabi placed her cool hands on them, massaging his temples until he finally relaxed and deflated. His skin was silky under her hands. She allowed herself the luxury of running her fingers through his thick hair.  
  
“Nori?”  
  
Hanabi pulled her hand away as if bitten.  
  
“She isn’t here,” she spat.  
  
“Himiko?” He was looking at her, but didn’t see. The poison or the pain had blinded him.  
  
“She’s not here either. Nor Hinata. It’s just me. Hanabi.”  
  
“Himiko, something is very wrong. I can’t move. Bring Otousan now.”  
  
He was mewling like a kitten, a sight pathetic to behold. Hanabi gripped his shoulders, shook him a little. She would make him her father again.  
  
“I’m not her. I’m Hanabi. Look at me! Look. At. Me!”  
  
But his white eyes never focused. He was struggling for every breath now.  
  
“I can’t move,” he panted again. “Hanabi, I can’t move. I’m dying. Orochimaru…”  
  
He had called her by name.  
  
“Shhh!” Hanabi soothed. She trailed her fingers down his chest, loosened the neck of his uniform.  
  
“We have to talk, Otousan” she said conversationally. “It’s important.”  
  
Her father seemed to be regaining some of his old equilibrium. He didn’t ask for the healer this time, or call out for the women he had loved.  
  
“There need to be some changes with the Branch House. They need to know their proper places. They _want_ to know their places. They need firm rules, strict boundaries.” His chest was cold to the touch. She imagined she could feel his rapid heartbeat beneath her fingertips. “Don’t you agree?”  
  
He didn’t say anything. She sensed that he couldn’t. She cupped his chin with one hand. It was icy too, yet his heart still fluttered.  
  
Hanabi pressed both hands upon her father’s chest then, one atop the other.  
  
“You can't feel that, can you?” She ran her tongue over her sharp teeth. "Then again, you never could.”  
  
Impossibly, his mouth moved. His voice was a husky whisper. She imagined that sound might be what Nori heard in her ear just before she dropped off to sleep at night.  
  
“I did love you, Hanabi. The best way I could.”  
  
A fat round teardrop landed on the back of her hand. Emotion threatened to clog her throat, but she managed to grind out her final words to him.  
  
“The sad thing is, Otousan. I loved you, too.”  
  
Her father watched, in a resigned way, as she prepared to execute his favorite technique. She flexed her fingers as the chakra pooled there, then took her time positioning them over his heart again. When she measured herself later, she would always find herself lacking in one respect. She could not summon the nerve to watch her father’s face when she killed him.  
  
()()()()()  
  
The two nin Hanabi had summarily kicked out of the compound summoned the Hokage from the hospital. Hyuga Hiashi was by far the most badly injured of the group returning from the Sound Country, so she abandoned her duties there to hurry to his bedside.  
  
She had dealt with Orochimaru’s poisons once before, of course, and had no doubt that he had refined them in their long years of separation.  
  
She tried to process all of her new information as she jumped from rooftop to rooftop. The supposed Uchiha Sasuke was a look alike, and Orochimaru had not even possessed that poor soul’s body. No, he had been disguised as a lowly prisoner. Her former teammate was finally putting his great vanity aside, and that could become a very dangerous thing.  
  
Naruto had failed to complete their mission. It was a clear dereliction of duty, but she could not help but pity him. He had caught Uchiha Sasuke’s trail in the mountains, and when the others wouldn’t listen to him, he had followed his own instincts. She would pay a visit to his poor wife after this long night was over, she decided. Or perhaps send Sakura. Sakura could break the news more gently.  
  
But now to the business at hand. Bursting into the room, she found Hyuga Hanabi lying curled beside her father’s prone body. Ignoring her, Tsunade knelt beside him and began assessing the situation. No aspiration, cold to the touch. She pushed his uniform shirt aside to begin chest compressions. What she saw made her draw back as if struck.  
  
The quickly fading welts on his chest could have been the last flush of life leaving his body. Or they could have been chakra burns.  
  
By this time the rest of the Hyuga Branch House had crowded into the room behind her. She was astonished to see that even Hinata, supported by Hyuga Tetsuo, was out of bed to pay respects to her father.  
  
Tsunade was careful not to look at Hanabi.  
  
“I’m afraid I was too late,” she reported to the sizable crowd.  
  
The quiet, even voice of the new leader of Hyuga carried to the far corners of the room. It was eerie really, stranded like a fish on a hook in the middle of all those white eyes.  
  
“If you’re not here to help, then you need to go.”  
  
Nodding, her suspicions intact, the leader of the village did just that.  
  
()()()()()  
  
The day of her father’s funeral, Hinata began to bleed. She became aware of the pain sometime after the service and sometime before she saw her sister order two burly Branch House members to forcibly escort Sugino Nori away from the graveside.  
  
“There’s nothing you could have done about it,” Sakura would later pronounce, though they both suspected that it was her overexertion that ended the already fragile life.  
  
Hinata’s only wish was that Naruto had been home the afternoon she lost their baby. Instead, he was four hundred kilometers away, still on the elusive trail of Uchiha Sasuke.  
  
So Hinata began to truly understand what her mother meant when she said women do not have the luxury of crying.


	10. Monkshood

 

_When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions._

_– William Shakespeare, Hamlet_

  
  
Two more years and two more dead babies. Supposedly a person can get used to anything. Kidnapping victims can come to love their abductors; prisoners can compose amazing poetry while confined to a 6x10 cell; nin with amputated limbs can go back into the field. Even a goldfish’s size will adapt to the size of its bowl.  
  
But as long as she lived, Hinata thought, she would never get used to losing her babies.  
  
Though they never spoke of it, it was with Naruto’s tacit accord that Hinata began taking the pills that would prevent conception. She did not rely on her herbs. In that one respect, the herbs had failed her mother, too. Hinata did not allow herself to think about how her life might have turned out if they had not.  
  
The subject of children soon became taboo between Hinata and Naruto, just like Hanabi and her doings in the Hyuga compound, or Uchiha Sasuke, or where Naruto went on the nights that Hinata woke up in bed alone.  
  
Once the perpetual boy, Naruto now looked older, almost haggard, and when she bothered to look in the mirror at all, Hinata noticed strands of silver in her own hair. They were only twenty-seven.  
  
Some would say twenty-seven is an enviable lifespan for an active shinobi. The Uzumakis had, of course, attended their share of shinobi funerals over the years. And with her work at the hospital she was always in close proximity to death. She had kissed Aburame Shino’s lips for the second and final time in her life after the orderly washed the blood from his still face. And she had observed her cousin Neji, posture rigid, as he bore the urn carrying the ashes of his genin teammate, Rock Lee, to the shinobi cemetery.  
  
Hinata had always held a special place in her heart for her cousin. Something undefined and indefinable. Maybe it was admiration for the boy who would fight, and fight and fight. Maybe it was because, as everyone grows older – and Hinata felt infinitely old – they come to appreciate the people who knew them when they were very young. Or maybe it was because of what she had seen on his face in his bedroom on the day of her wedding. Sometimes, in bed alone at night, she would take comfort in what she had learned that day. They never spoke of it, of course, and she knew they never would.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Neji saw Hinata very little now that she was married and living away from the compound. With her gone, he had considered moving into the village himself, but before he could take the time off to find a place, Hanabi decreed that no Hyuga was allowed to live outside the compound. Before Hanabi, he could have done worse for a place to live. The dormitory he inhabited, though nearly devoid of personal objects, was cleaned on Fridays, and they fed him. It was not as if he spent much time there. Lately, he viewed the world through the slits of his ANBU mask more often than not. Still, with the most fundamental choice taken away from him in early childhood, the smaller choices came to matter more. And with the new stricture, the Hyuga compound began to feel more and more like a prison.  
  
His dormitory room did overlook the Nakano River, though. Through his single window, he could see the rows of cheap houses that some greedy soul had put up precariously near the floodplain. He could pick out Hinata’s house because hers was the only one in that drab little neighborhood that had flowers in the window boxes. It was a distant blur though. Only if he activated his Byakugan, could he see his cousin’s comings and goings.  
  
He never did. That trap would be too easy to fall into. Self-control was something he had always prided himself on, and something that was always in short supply around Hinata. He put a heavy shade on the window instead. It soon began to collect dust.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Hanabi married a boy from an old Grass Country family. Saito Katsuro was not a shinobi, had had no special abilities, and anything that came out of his mouth was dull, to say the least. But he was handsome, and malleable, and his presence got the Council off her back in regards to finding a husband and carrying on the Hyuga line. It was much easier to get her way, she had found, when the Council thought she was listening to their instructions. They had even approved her orders for many of Hyuga’s finest shinobi to resign their commissions and spend their days on Clan business instead.  
  
“They grow weak and disloyal to the family,” she had claimed. What she had not said was that she thought the Council members before her the weakest of all.  
  
But there would be time yet. Hanabi was young and Hyuga was old, and she not was stupid enough to think that she could make changes over night. And nevermind the shinobi who had refused to leave the Hokage’s employ. They would be dealt with. Just not quite yet.  
  
Yes, the Council was happy. Times were peaceful; thanks to Saito, the Clan coffers were strong, and their leader was married and beautiful and young. If she used the cursed jinjutsu a bit too often to punish, perhaps that was warranted. Hadn’t Hiashi been slow to activate the curse? And wasn’t it true that the family had grown weak and fragmented under his leadership? What about Hinata? An unmarked black sheep had been allowed to leave them. A danger to the whole clan had slipped through Hiashi’s fingers.  
  
When someone brought the subject of Hinata up in Council, Hanabi would smile sweetly and declare that she meant to honor her father’s wishes in that regard.  
  
“I will leave the matter the way it is as long as I can,” she would assert. “But if war comes again, she could endanger every one of us. We’re Hyuga,” she had concluded. “We do what must be done. If I had to cut off my arm for the good of the Clan, I would do it without hesitation. Individuals must sacrifice for the good of the group. That is what makes us strong.”  
  
Except for Neji, they had all applauded her speech.  
  
Fools.  
  
()()()()()  
  
That night Neji was visibly uncomfortable, standing there alone with her in her private chamber. His perfectly erect posture and carefully blank expression was so much like her father that it made her want to close her eyes. Or to activate her Byakugan – to dissect Neji down to individual parts, joints and muscles, and chakra coils.  
  
She ran her tongue along the edge of her teeth.  
  
“Good evening, Neji-niisan,” she began.  
  
He bowed again and his hair fell over the curve of his neck. Supplication became him.  
  
“Hyuga-sama.”  
  
“It’s always Hanabi-sama to you, Neji-niisan,” she corrected, smiling. He hadn’t moved from the door way, so she came to him, circling just out of arms reach, never taking her eyes off of his. He stood soldier-perfect again, staring straight ahead. Not a muscle twitched. He had always had such fine, fine self-control.  
  
She had spent hours planning out an explanation before she called him to her, only to realize with a euphoric kind of clarity that there was no need to offer him one.  
  
“I need an heir. I’ve chosen you,” she told him succinctly.  
  
For a split second he did not breathe. She considered that a personal victory.  
  
Until he responded.  
  
“No.”  
  
She turned to face him full-on for the first time.  
  
“You have no choice!” And she cursed herself because her voice sounded young and reedy in her own ears. Eager. She realized she had brought her hands together subconsciously, ready to activate the cursed jinjutsu. His eyes took her all in, her hands and her face.  
  
“I do,” he said, his voice impassive. “A woman can’t force a man to father her child, Hanabi-sama.”  
  
She ran her tongue over her teeth again. She felt the wide smile stretch her cheeks.  
  
“Not true, niisan. Not true.”  
  
She saw him stiffen. She thought he would turn on his heel and try to leave, but he did not. He had been bred for too many long years to wait for permission to leave. Trained like a puppy.  
  
She had been circling again. She stopped, just out of his lunging reach, keeping her hands clasped. It would take less than a split second to activate the cursed jinjutsu and she imagined she could smell the fear radiating off him like a night blooming flower.  
  
Smart. Her father had been so smart to raise Neji with nothing but his dignity. Because it was the simplest thing for them to take from him and he clung to it like the lichens on the stones in the Nakano River.  
  
“You’ve never brought a woman home to us, niisan,” she said lightly. She saw his eyes unfocus from her, saw him nearly imperceptibly relax into a soldier’s stance. He was merely tolerating this. Merely tolerating her. This was not respect.  
  
“As far as I know, you’ve never even looked for a woman.” She wanted to whisper these words in his ear, but did not dare get that close to him. If he managed to pin her wrists he could do real damage before she could stop him. Would he lose that impassive look in his eyes? She felt her stomach tighten at the thought.  
  
“You’ve never even looked for a woman,” she repeated. “Because you’ve already found one. You’ll never marry, because the one you love is already married.” She lowered her voice, an old trick that forced an audience to listen closely. “Yours are not the only eyes that see everything, Neji-niisan.”  
  
He remained perfectly still but, somehow, through some trick of his posture, she knew he was afraid now. She fancied she could hear the sweat sliding down his palms.  
  
“Unsealed, my sister is a danger to the whole village,” she said, in a new tone of voice.  
  
As if she had actually changed the subject.  
  
Hanabi met Neji’s eyes again, satisfied that – this time – she had his complete attention.  
  
“Hinata would be safer in a cage. Don’t you agree niisan?”  
  
His body was suddenly all tense lines, thrumming with energy. He seemed bigger suddenly, seemed to fill the room.  
  
She opened her mouth, ready to remind him that he would give her an heir when he took the words from her mouth.  
  
“I will do as you request, Hanabi-sama.”  
  
Her knees suddenly felt as weak as if she had just completed twelve straight hours of training.  
  
“Very well, then.” She ran her tongue along the edge of her teeth again. “Very well.”  
  
And they were standing there, alone in her private chambers with a task ahead of them.  
  
“Then undress,” she commanded imperiously.  
  
He waited a split-second too long before complying. For a long instant, he merely stared at her. And then, his eyes never leaving hers, he reached up and untied the knot of his hitai-ate, leaving the band that held his hair back. The cursed seal was vivid against his pale forehead.  
  
He folded the cloth slowly, careful to protect the metal face plate. When it was bundled into a neat little package he merely stood there holding it by his side.  
  
Hanabi gestured impatiently. “You can put that on my dressing table.”  
  
He sat the cloth where she had designated without acknowledging her. His uniform vest came off next. He sat it on her dressing table stool without asking for permission. Then the shirt came over his head. She drank in the sight of the black cloth rising up to expose his pale stomach and chest. The shirt off, he reached back and adjusted his mane of hair. It ended up in a twist over his left shoulder. The carefully folded garment went on top of the vest.  
  
He unwound the bandages from his right arm then bent down to do the same to the cloth around his calves. She could have offered him a seat to make his job easier, but she didn’t. He rolled the bandages in a ball and deposited them beside his hitai-ate. He kept his eyes on hers the whole time.  
  
Neji didn’t hesitate at the button of the black pants. Maybe he sensed that any pause would make her anticipate it more. That it would make this more like a striptease than a perfunctory step in completing their mission.  
  
He pulled the pants down over his hips mechanically, and then he was only wearing black boxer shorts. Then those were gone. He had obeyed her command fully.  
  
Hanabi scrutinized his body. Creating a child with him would certainly not be a hardship.  
  
Fucking him would be even better.  
  
He would be the finest looking man she had ever been with. He was the finest looking man alive, now that her father was dead.  
  
She pulled her own shirt over her head. She thought she ought to command him not to stare at her so openly as she undressed, but decided against it. They certainly weren’t going to get any conceiving done if his penis remained a lifeless lump between his legs. She scowled inwardly, unhappy to see that his condition did not change when she slowly unbound the bandages that covered her breasts. In fact, he looked rather bored with the whole affair. She reminded herself that this was not meant to be a seduction.  
  
Hanabi didn’t bother to fold her own clothes as they came off piece by piece.  
  
Naked, she sat on the edge of her bed. She beckoned for him to sit beside her and he complied, staying far enough away that their naked thighs did not touch.  
  
He was still annoyingly flaccid.  
  
“You need to… prepare yourself,” she said.  
  
Neji stared at the opposite wall, avoiding their reflections in her dressing table mirror. She noted that he would not look down and imagined that that was a point of pride with him, keeping his head held high. Even on the feather soft bed, he sat with his back very straight.  
  
“And do you command me to do that?” he asked. He could have been offering a mission report.  
  
Hanabi ran her tongue along her teeth again, thinking. She smiled widely at her conclusion.  
  
“Maybe I can help. I know. Since my body doesn’t please you, you can pretend I’m someone else. Would that help…?” She leaned away from him so that she could get a better look at his face. “...N-n-niisan?”  
  
When he lifted her roughly off the bed, Hanabi felt her neck snap back so far that her loose hair tickled her shoulder blades.  
  
He had her arms pinned behind her before she could even begin to activate the cursed seal. His large hands encircled her slender wrists, completely immobilizing her fingers. They stood together now at the edge of the bed, chest to chest. She felt him squirm away from touching her, but he didn’t dare push her too far away for fear of losing his leverage.  
  
He had her, but he didn’t seem to know what to do with her now. She writhed against the harsh grip and then discovered something that delighted her.  
  
His cock was a hard presence against her stomach now.  
  
“Is this how you like it, niisan?” she murmured. She saw him swallow. He was looking down his nose at her now. She pressed herself farther against him, not caring that it wrenched her shoulders. He was actually shaking.  
  
There was no way she could extricate herself from his grip on her wrists. Not physically.  
  
“What are you going to do?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. She realized then that she was breathing heavily, her face felt flushed. She smiled into his impassive face again anyway. “You can’t hold my hands behind my back forever, niisan.  
  
“I won’t use the jinjutsu if you just do it. Give me an heir and you won’t be in trouble.” This close to him, he smelled so masculine. Wild. She could taste his musk on her tongue. “But if you don’t, you had better kill me while you have me.”  
  
She saw him hesitate, visibly saw him relax as he made his decision. Like a hanged man who had just had the hood slipped over his head.  
  
“I hope I do give you an heir,” he said quietly. “And I hope it kills you.”  
  
Hanabi resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  
  
“First things first, then, Neji-niisan.” She writhed against him again and he pulled back sharply. “Let go of my hands. I wouldn’t hurt you now. You wouldn’t be able to perform.” She added, “This is just as distasteful to me as it is to you.”  
  
She thought he might have made a barely audible sound in his throat, but she could not be certain.  
  
He let her go reluctantly and Hanabi massaged her wrists. They would bruise. She found the pain somewhat comforting.  
  
He merely stood there, so she was the one to lie back on the bed.  
  
Neji followed her, climbing on top of her without preamble. He did not look at her and he positioned himself on his hands in an awkward pushup. He really wasn’t going to touch her any more than necessary.  
  
He hesitated then.  
  
“Should I do it now?” he asked a bit waspishly.  
  
“Do it,” she commanded.  
  
He still hesitated over her, though. She felt him pressing hard against her thigh; all he would have to do would be to adjust the angle and he would be inside her. She looked up at him and he was looking down into her face. For some reason she had expected him to turn away. Again she marveled at how much he resembled her father. She felt her thighs grow warm where his pelvis aligned with hers.  
  
“I can’t do it this way,” he said abruptly, and he scooted up onto his knees above her. She lay there for a few seconds, watching him loom over her.  
  
“I can’t look at you.”  
  
Hanabi’s fingers twitched. Her hands were free now; it would be so simple to activate the cursed jinjutsu. She wandered briefly what it would be like to activate the curse while he was inside her. His last seizure, on the day of Hinata’s wedding, had been quite violent…  
  
“Very well,” she decided, and turned over onto her own knees. She felt him press behind her again, felt him position his cock at her entrance.  
  
“Now?” he asked again.  
  
“Now,” she agreed.  
  
He thrust inside her with no further equivocation. She rocked her hips back to meet him and he caught her hipbones in a hard grip.  
  
“Hold still,” he ground out.  
  
Hanabi turned her head so that she could see him over her shoulder. She wished she had made him take his hair down now. She would have liked to have seen it streaming over his chest as he fucked her.  
  
“It doesn’t have to be so bad for you,” she said in a cajoling voice. “From here, you can pretend I’m her. We’re sisters. This is the closest you’ll ever get to fucking her, Neji.”  
  
He was moving mechanically behind her, but she knew he listened.  
  
“No one will ever know if you pretend I’m Hinata.”  
  
He did not vary his speed or motions. She looked over her shoulder again and his face was set in hard lines. He was concentrating, but a thin bead of sweat at his brow belied the emotionless expression on his face.  
  
Maybe it was inadvertent, but he thrust into her a bit harder. She jolted forward and felt the heat rise into her belly. Her bruised wrists tingled beneath her.  
  
Inhaling – she never forgot what a vulnerable position she was in -- Hanabi forced her voice into a higher pitch.  
  
“It feels good when you speed up like that,” she said quietly, in a close imitation of Hinata’s voice.  
  
“Don’t, Hanabi-sama.” But his voice was choked. He still thrust shallowly inside her. She reared back to meet him, feeling his length slide along her inner walls.  
  
“No one has to know, niisan.” A little breathy now. She was careful to keep her head down so that he wouldn’t even spy her profile. “Just pretend. Just for tonight. And it doesn’t have to be so unpleasant.”  
  
She could hear him breathing now. Faster. He moved almost imperceptibly faster. For a moment she imagined she was Hinata and that he was in love with her.  
  
“I’ve always wanted you to do this, niisan,” she said in Hinata’s voice. “I’ve always wanted you to fuck me.” Then she squeezed, bearing down on his cock in a way men invariably found irresistible.  
  
She heard him groan and she smiled, showing her teeth to no one. So much for that fine, fine self-control. She felt him pause behind her. His hands were huge gripping her slender hips.  
  
“Don’t stop,” she persisted. He moved again.  
  
And just before he came inside her, she heard him ground out, “You. Are. Hanabi.”  
  
Even though they remained unspoken, as she lay there willing the next Hyuga to begin growing inside her, the rest of that sentence rang loudly in the silence: “And you will never be Hinata.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
Another evening in her bed chamber, the look in his eyes when she ordered him to lick the ball of her ankle was pure murder, but she knew he would do it.  
  
He wouldn’t kill her, there in their intimate moments. He didn’t have it in him.  
  
He was born in his cage. He had not spent his entire life toeing that fine line between absolute power and absolute subjugation. Not since he was a child had he taken a breath that the Head Family could not take from him with a flex of their hands.  
  
He had never been forced to make the choices she had had to make. It must be peaceful for him, on her leash. He would never admit it, of course. His tongue licked a warm curve around the bone of her ankle and she felt her eyelids flutter and meet.


	11. Wormwood

 

_This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine._

_– William Shakespeare, The Tempest_

  
  
Sakura was wrong. In the end, Uchiha Sasuke did come back. He returned with no nin headband on his forehead, and no cursed seal. He also hadn’t grown as tall as everyone suspected he might, and the dark lines around his eyes made him appear infinitely older than they knew him to be. Some women, girls when he had left, paused to ask themselves how they had ever thought him handsome. When interrogated about his whereabouts after his brother’s death -- and he was thoroughly interrogated – he would only say that he had traveled across the sea beyond the Five Countries.  
  
He would never be a Konoha shinobi ever again, of course. Truthfully, the fact that the Hokage’s apprentice vouched for him was the only thing that kept him out of prison. Nonetheless, the former missing nin was sequestered for quite some time before he was allowed to freely move about the village.  
  
There are few secrets in a shinobi village, of course. So the very hour that his quarantine came to an end, everyone knew. Most speculated that he would keep to himself -- that he would not dare do otherwise. But he, along with his keeper, surprised them all by attending Yamanaka Ino’s birthday party at one of the finer drinking establishments in Konoha.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Tsunade balled the note up and sighed. Hyuga Hanabi would meet with her, but it had to be alone, at night and on Hyuga turf. The Godaime had dealt with young pups like Hanabi before, new leaders testing their claws on their betters, but they were generally foreigners. She had never before had to deal with such a threat from within.  
  
The abrupt resignation of nearly twenty Hyuga shinobi had severely weakened her forces at a dangerous time. This came at a time when Orochimaru seemed to be taking Uchiha Sasuke’s return to Konoha badly. Her former teammate never had been able to accept a loss. Tsunade wearily pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers.  
  
An hour later, she was in Hanabi’s office, positioned in front of the big desk like a repentant schoolchild. Just out of spite, she sat down in her allotted chair and put her feet on the desk.  
  
Hanabi smiled her sharp-toothed smile at the childish gesture. Privately, Tsunade had always thought there was something disconcerting about the Hyuga, all of them so perpetually remote and assured.  
  
Hanabi politely offered her sake, which she declined. She forced herself to ignore the one lifted brow that eloquently communicated Hanabi’s surprise that she would turn down a drink. She wasn’t going to get into a playground scrap with this puppy.  
  
“I want to know why all the Hyuga shinobi have resigned,” she said bluntly.  
  
Hanabi shrugged in feigned helplessness.  
  
“I suppose you should ask them.”  
  
Tsunade leapt to her feet, leaned over the desk.  
  
“I know you ordered them all to resign. I’m not an idiot. Why I don’t know is what the hell you think you’re doing. Listen, kid, if you think you can have your own army in the middle of a shinobi village, then you’re goddamned wrong!”  
  
Tsunade was perversely pleased with the slight flush on Hanabi’s face now. The younger woman stood up as well. To Tsunade’s ears, she sounded impossibly young.  
  
“You don’t talk to me like that in my own house! Your Konoha consists of a flock of idiots who compete over who will get to die for their village first. The Byakugan looked out over the Nakano River for generations before this village was built and we will be here long after Konoha’s ashes scatter to the four corners of the earth. We don’t owe you anything.”  
  
Byakugan swelled around Hanabi’s eyes and Tsunade knew that a fight right now wouldn’t be worth the effort. Not with blank eyed Hyuga guards outside the door. She could take them, of course, but at what diplomatic price? Truthfully, she hadn’t guessed it would come to this. She had thought Hanabi was negotiating higher pay or some other such nonsense for her family, and that a show of power would scare her off. She had never guessed that the new Hyuga leader planned to slice off her own section of Konoha.  
  
She thought of the chakra burns on Hyuga Hiashi’s chest, then, and suddenly the Sound threat seemed far distant compared to the hostilities at home.  
  
()()()()()  
  
When Sakura brought Uchiha Sasuke over to speak with them, Naruto had started to lead Hinata away with a hand on the small of her back. Even with just that one small point of contact between them, she could feel the tension radiating off of her husband. But she couldn’t just walk away when Sakura was looking her directly in the eye and smiling like that, dragging a reluctant looking Sasuke by the wrist. Only when Sakura drew near could Hinata see the way the other medic-nin’s hands shook or hear the quake in her voice when she murmured, “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”  
  
Sasuke’s return would not be good for her, Hinata thought.  
  
“W-welcome home, Sasuke.” When Naruto remained stubbornly silent she had greeted the Uchiha for the both of them. Manners dictated it, no matter how little she wanted to. She had even stood on tip-toe to kiss her former betrothed on the cheek. Her nose so close to his hair, she couldn’t help but catch his scent. He smelled of fire.  
  
The way scents sometimes do, Sasuke’s immediately transported her to another time and place where she stood on her back porch with dry eyes while the smoke from her burning herb garden wafted across the Nakano River.  
  
She gasped, a small “oh” that went unnoticed by everyone but Sasuke, whose black eyes briefly swept over her, emotionless as a searchlight.  
  
It did not escape Hinata that Naruto avoided Sasuke for the entire evening. He only seemed to breathe easily again when the gaunt young man said his goodbyes and left the party early. Hinata just shook her head when Naruto and Kiba began a friendly drinking contest at the bar. She didn’t stop him, even when Ino announced pointedly to her that Kiba was winning at whatever game they had started between them and that Naruto was sure to end up with a killer hangover if nobody stopped him soon.  
  
No, she looked on when he slapped the bar and ordered a round for the house.  
  
Naruto had married her, Hinata, because she had never once judged him.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Hinata went home early, leaving Naruto behind. She never could stand large crowds, and the smoke filled bar had given her a headache.  
  
“Give me another hour,” Naruto had told her, before grabbing her around the waist and kissing her there in front of everyone. They had been married four years and she had yet to become accustomed to his random public displays of affection. She doubted she ever would, after the way she had grown up. In the Hyuga Compound, at least after her mother’s death, the only time they touched one another was to train.  
  
Maybe it was because this thought was still on her mind that she wasn’t entirely surprised to find a Hyuga standing by her kitchen sink, looking out the window at her dark garden, his fall of long hair obscuring his features.  
  
“Ne-”  
  
He turned around.  
  
“Tetsuo!” She should have known it wouldn’t be Neji standing her dark kitchen. They hadn’t spoken in over a year.  
  
“Hinata-sama,” her cousin bowed low, almost obsequiously so. It was discomfiting.  
  
“You know I’m not the heir anymore,” she faltered. “I’m not even Hyuga.”  
  
“That’s what I’ve come to talk to you about.”  
  
She realized now why she had mistaken Tetsuo for Neji. Her cousin who was always laughing, always up to something, especially if it involved stealing cigarettes or playing pranks, was unusually grim. His shoulders were set, and his mouth was a thin line. She watched as he took a cigarette out of a pack from his pouch and began to nervously twiddle it between two fingers. Tetsuo never had been able to master the absolute physical self-control that was one of the many Hyuga trademarks.  
  
“Well, sit down, I’ll make tea.” She reached to flip the light switch.  
  
“Don’t!” Tetsuo sprang over the table and grasped her wrist.  
  
“I can’t be seen here,” he explained. “And I don’t have much time.”  
  
They stood just like that, her hand on the wall beneath the light switch, him almost whispering. And he told her.  
  
“Your sister is mad, Hinata-sama. She acts like an empress and the Council loves her for it! All she can talk of is self-sacrifice for Hyuga. She won’t let anyone leave the Compound without permission and she made us all resign our commissions with Konoha.”  
  
Hinata’s stomach began to ache.  
  
“I’m sure she has her reasons, Tetsuo-san. The Sound is making threats again. My sister is probably just trying to protect our people.”  
  
“Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds, Hinata-sama? If Sound is preparing an attack, Konoha needs the Hyuga more than ever!”  
  
“I--” Hinata hesitated. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about that. I’m no longer a part of the family. I haven’t spoken to my sister in years.”  
  
“There’s something else,” Tetsuo took a breath, letting the suspense hang in the air with the rhythm of a natural storyteller. Hinata waited.  
  
“I think she killed your father.”  
  
The ache in Hinata’s stomach turned into an intense burn. She twisted away from Tetsuo and crossed the room.  
  
“This is my sister you’re talking about,” she nearly shouted. “You don’t talk about Hanabi that way to me!”  
  
“Hinata-sama, I saw it. The poison had stopped spreading but then your sister ordered us all out of the room. When we returned, he was dead. There were chakra burns on his chest. She did it!” He followed her a few steps across the room, desperate.  
  
“Get out!” Hinata shouted, she was shaking all over and couldn’t stop.  
  
“I’m telling the truth!” Tetsuo reached out, as if to touch her and her hand moved on its own volition. The open handed strike to his chest sent her cousin stumbling backward, toward the door.  
  
Hinata gasped but the strike seemed to sober Tetsuo.  
  
“She’ll kill me if she finds out I was here, Hinata-sama. She’ll kill me.”  
  
He slipped out the door and was gone.  
  
Hinata slumped against the doorway and schooled herself not to think about it. If she thought about it, she would cry, and she didn’t have that luxury. Instead she made some tea with the slightest dose of valerian to calm her nerves and then she cleaned the kitchen until it shone.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Later that night, lying on her side in their big bed, one hand curled in the pillow case, Hinata half-heard Naruto enter the house. She listened to the quiet click of the door locking, the rustle of cloth on cloth as he removed his kunai pouch and hung it on one of the hooks by the door, and the faint sound of footsteps he never tried to muffle for fear of arousing her defensive instincts.  
  
Stirring a little, she heard him pause in the doorway. She stretched her arm out under the pillow, luxuriating in the feel of cotton against her bare inner arm, and turned her head fractionally to regard him. All she could she see was a darker shape framed in the moonlight from the kitchen window. But it was all right, because he was Naruto and momentarily he would slip out of his clothes and press his warm body against her bare back.  
  
But he stood there a few moments more. Hinata felt sleep leaving her like a warm blanket pulled down her body inch by inch until she finally woke up enough to prop up on one elbow.  
  
“What’s wrong?” she asked his silhouette, and when he still did not move she reached for the bedside lamp.  
  
“Don’t,” he said, and his voice was thick.  
  
Frozen in mid-reach, Hinata watched him move toward her. It was slow, and the way he had to circle the bed to reach his side reminded her uncomfortably of a predator circling his prey. It was still so dark that she could not see him watching her. But she could feel his eyes on her and for some reason she felt the need to slowly pull her hand away from the lamp and settle back on the bed.  
  
On his side of the big bed now, knees touching the mattress, Naruto’s shape blended into the darkness. In the stillness, Hinata could hear him breathing and only that made her realize that she was holding her own breath. The first frission of fear tingled at the base of her spine and, continuing to lie perfectly still, she whispered, “Naruto…”  
  
“Don’t,” he said again, and braced both hands on the bed, then his knees. His movements were slow, deliberate and it felt like an eternity had passed before he crawled on top her. Hinata realized that fear had been replaced with another primal emotion as this dark, quiet stranger immobilized her legs with his weight. She considered activating her Byakugan. Not being able to see him was a little intimidating, but activating her bloodline limit seemed like an odd sort of thing to do with her husband. An untrusting thing.  
  
Swallowing, she waited.  
  
Her night vision had emerged enough for her to make out the shape of Naruto’s head now. She watched as he cocked it to the side, and then brought one hand up to cup her chin between thumb and forefinger. Large, rough fingers gently tilted her head to the side before sliding down to cover the pulse point in her neck. His face came closer until he was nuzzling beneath her ear. But he didn’t kiss her, or run his tongue down the length of her jaw line. He pressed his nose to the juncture of her neck and shoulder and inhaled. The action caused the tiny hairs at the back of her neck to stand on end.  
  
Still gripping her neck between two fingers, Naruto then moved his face up until the cartilage on the tip of his nose brushed her forehead. She felt him inhale again, and then his tongue traced her hairline, tasted the thin sheen of sweat that had materialized there.  
  
She brought her hands up to encircle his neck, but he pulled back abruptly before she could complete the motion. She let her hands fall to her sides while watching him bend down to her again, still inhaling her.  
  
Hinata lay perfectly still as Naruto explored her body, scenting her neck again, beneath her arms, behind her knees, between her legs.  
  
The last drew a gasp from her throat. At the small noise, Naruto stopped and Hinata, who hadn’t realized her eyes had been squeezed shut, looked down at him. In the dimness, she could see that he was looking back up at her, his mouth and nose still only millimeters from her panties. She tensed a little, and he sniffed at her again, then his tongue flicked out to trace the outline of her labia through the cotton. She pried her eyes open again to find that he was still regarding her, his eyes narrowed but observant. She watched as he licked her again, this time starting lower and ending up tonguing her clit through the thin material. Her fingers dug into the bed sheets.  
  
Hinata thrust into the touch a little, but Naruto pulled back. Spreading her legs, his rough hands gripping her tender thighs, he licked the hemmed edge of the panties where they clung to the juncture between crotch and thigh. She remained perfectly still as he worked his way around the edges of the material, his tongue sometimes slipping beneath the fabric to leave a wet trail on the protected skin there.  
  
Her breath became ragged when he finished his patient tracing and lightly nuzzled her pubic bone again. Once again his tongue dipped to caress her through her panties and both arms convulsively reached down to push the material aside. But he looked at her again with those strange, over-bright eyes and it was enough to make her settle back down against the pillow. Hand still on her thighs, Naruto spread her legs farther apart until the soles of both her feet rested on the mattress. He ran his tongue once more up the taut material between her legs before moving it aside with two blunt fingers.  
  
At long last his tongue found sensitive skin and Hinata answered a confident swipe with a groan.  
  
“Naruto-kun,” she began, and it came out as more of a plea. He stopped moving, though, when the words left her lips, and she hastily quieted again. Hinata was quick to catch on to the rules of this game.  
  
She unconsciously rubbed her head back and forth against the pillow as Naruto increased the tempo. Finally she couldn’t stop herself from reaching down and stroking the shock of blonde hair with grasping fingers. This time he didn’t stop when she touched him, only upped the pace of his ministrations further until the tingling began low in her stomach. Naruto chose that moment to pull away again, leaving Hinata arching on the bed.  
  
But his calloused hands were on her again and this time his breathing was just as ragged as hers. Hands made clumsy with lust pawed at her panties. The simple act of sliding them over her hips seemed too much for him and she watched half in shock as he twisted the material between his fingers and pulled. A repeat of the motion left her naked, but she had no time to gape before he was rolling her over onto her stomach.  
  
Suddenly finding herself with a mouthful of pillowcase, Hinata felt Naruto straddle her legs. Heat bubbled between them when the sides of his knees brushed her outer thighs. He ran both hands up the backs of her legs and she shuddered at the uneven texture of his palms against her over-sensitized skin.  
  
Reaching her thighs, he cupped them and pulled her up onto all fours. She felt stickiness and the smooth flesh of Naruto’s cock bumping her thigh before he adjusted the angle and thrust into her with a force he rarely used. She gasped, and the sheet bunched between her flexing fingers.  
  
Inside her now, Naruto showed no signs of slowing. His hands curled around her hipbones like handles until she had her knees properly braced beneath her, and then he removed one hand and placed his palm flat against her lower back. The slight pressure there, coupled with the hot brush of his thighs, and the way his determined thrusts pressed against her over and over again ended it all too quickly. Unable to hold back anymore, she vocalized her orgasm with a series of shallow gasps. She heard Naruto, above and behind her, exhale with a shudder as his own climax wracked both their bodies.  
  
It did not take long for her knees to buckle beneath her and Naruto followed her down onto the bed, snaking one arm around her waist. He was asleep behind her in mere seconds. No further words had been spoken between them.  
  
She struggled to turn over under the weight of his arm. It had always amazed her how deeply men could sleep just after sex. This bit of information, of course, had come in handy to many a “special” kunoichi when it came to taking care of delicate matters of diplomacy. That random thought faded as soon as she finally found a comfortable spot in the crook of Naruto’s arm. Before she closed her eyes to sleep she gripped him in an awkward one armed hug, pressing her nose against his chest.  
  
Hinata inhaled his unique Naruto scent. She loved the way he smelled after sex, like clean sweat and the slightly bitter tang of ejaculate. And underneath that—  
  
Hinata pulled back. Eyes wide open now.  
  
Underneath that, the unmistakable scent of fire.  
  
()()()()()  
  
She shouldn’t cry. These are not love matches and she cannot cry. It’s the only way for a Hyuga woman to survive.  
  
But she was not a Hyuga woman. Not anymore. And maybe she was stupid to think that by leaving that cold compound behind she could divorce herself from the legacy of her Clan.  
  
Naruto and Sasuke. The thing was, she knew. She had known. She had always known. So what was the use of having eyes that saw everything if she hadn’t seen this coming?  
  
()()()()()  
  
She waited for him. Icy rain had begun to fall, peppering Neji’s exposed face and arms with spines of ice. It was always tricky to predict late spring weather in Konoha. On top of the wall, Hinata looked cold. She hugged a coat around her chest and her cheeks were very white. That, more than anything, decided him that he should grant her unspoken request and speak with her a moment. Or so he told himself.  
  
She was watching him from above as he gathered chakra in his legs and leapt to the top of the wall. It was a visible spot, and Hanabi’s spies would inevitably find out about it. She would be displeased. Punishment would follow.  
  
It would be worth it.  
  
They regarded one another for a long moment, there above the crowd at the gate. It was the first time he had seen the strands of gray in her hair up close. To him, they did not make her look old at all.  
  
“Hinata-sama,” he finally said, because she did not seem to be able to say anything at all. He did not look her directly in the eye, and she did not look at him, and it had been over four hundred days since they had been alone together.  
  
Abruptly, she turned and looked out over the forest that encroached on Konoha’s walls.  
  
“Naruto is having an affair,” she said simply.  
  
He what?  
  
“Naruto wouldn’t do that.”  
  
“He is.” Her back was completely turned by then but the wind carried her words to him.  
  
“With who?”  
  
She laughed, and Neji would have given anything to never hear such a bitter sound come from her again.  
  
“With me.”  
  
There seemed nothing to say to that, so he didn’t.  
  
“It’s Sasuke,” she continued after a silence. “They think I don’t know. But I know.”  
  
What could Neji say? If he could think beyond the red rage that instructed him to beat Naruto until he was a smear in the dust, and then do the same to Sasuke -- and he could think beyond that, because he was Hyuga Neji -- he saw the logic in it. After all, who better than he would know the bond one forms with the person whom they once tried to kill?  
  
“I’m… sorry,” he finally offered.  
  
He even surprised himself when he stepped forward and placed one hand on her shoulder. She took it as a signal to turn around and they were facing one another. He was closer to her now than he had ever been in his life except that fight in their first Chuunin exam.  
  
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she said.  
  
Neji noted with some pride that she was not crying. He had never seen her cry.  
  
He could put his other hand on her shoulder now, he realized. Then pull her close and embrace her. He could kiss her next. And touch the silver in her hair.  
  
All his life, Neji had walked that invisible line. It had been drawn by his father, and her father, and Hyuga with blank white eyes stretching back for generations. He imagined them like a string of a thousand paper dolls. Now the urge to cross that line was almost unbearable. He could take her hand now, and fight Naruto, and fight Hanabi, and fight, and fight and fight until they were free. This was the woman who had saved him a hundred times. The only person in the world who could ever make him cross that invisible line.  
  
He loved her, he finally admitted. He had loved her for years.  
  
Maybe he would tell her.  
  
Maybe in another life.  
  
He was Hyuga Neji, and his white eyes saw logic even when he didn’t want them to. Hanabi would find her and mark her and if she thought she had nowhere to go now, wait until she was in her sister’s clutches. He thought of the Hyuga Head’s sharp-toothed smile and knew that Hanabi would never, ever let her sister go.  
  
This was the woman who had saved him a hundred times. It was his turn now to save her. Because he could hurt her now or Hanabi could hurt her later.  
  
She was very hard to look at.  
  
“I don’t know why you’ve told me this, Hinata-san. I cannot help you.”  
  
He took in her disbelieving stare.  
  
“Perhaps it would be best if you left Konoha.”  
  
“Of course,” he heard her murmur as he walked away from her. “Of course.”  
  
Perversely, he was proud that she still did not cry.


	12. The Color of Water, Part II

 

_Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,_  
_Which we ascribe to Heaven._

_\- Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well_

  
“Hyuga Tetsuo is dead.”  
  
She had heard it quite by chance on her way to her evening shift at the hospital. Or so she had thought at first. Then the two opaque-eyed Hyuga who had been conversing stopped and stared at her as she passed. It was a message of course.  
  
“Do not interfere.”  
  
As if she could.  
  
It was a brain aneurysm, she had learned that night. The bruises on his heels, his elbows and the back of his head indicated that he suffered massive seizures before finally passing on. Hinata knew that had been deliberate. She knew it in the way one knows there’s an intruder in the house, or that the baby has died.  
  
She had watched the processional over her backyard fence as her cousin’s ashes were carried over the bridge and through the village before they would be deposited in the family plot. Tetsuo didn’t deserve this. Tetsuo, whose only sins had been merely average taijutsu ability, an unhealthy propensity for cigarettes, and the fact that he came to Uzumaki Hinata for help when his life became unbearable.  
  
It had been a rainy spring. The Nakano River, separating her from the mourners, swelled with murky water.  
  
()()()()()  
  
One week after Tetsuo’s funeral, Hanabi took her seat at the table beside her husband. Under the speculative gazes of her in-laws, she was aware more than ever of her tiny breasts and flat belly. This was only the second day of the Saito’s month-long visit and the subject of an heir for their only son had already come up in conversation four times. Nobody had forgotten the clause in their elaborate marriage contract: within five years, Hyuuga Hanabi must provide Saito Katsuro with an heir or their union is nullified. The Saito’s were one of the oldest and most respectable families in the Water Country, and they intended to remain that way. Merging a shinobi clan with a non-shinobi clan was proving harder than Hanabi had ever envisioned.  
  
Her mother-in-law leaned in and stage whispered, “Are you sure you’re not exercising too much, dear? Physical fitness is a virtue, of course, but too much er… training can wreak havoc with your cycles, you know.”  
  
Hanabi affected her best blank Hyuga gaze and reminded herself yet again that the bottom line of numbers in her accounting ledger depended on the alliance with this woman – no matter how much fat oozed around the rings on her sausage-fingers as she reached for another shrimp scampi. Disgusting.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Neji appeared at the secret door to her room that night precisely on time.  
  
“Hanabi-sama.”  
  
That had become his customary greeting. Hanabi had long since given up on getting or giving in pleasure in their brief, perfunctory encounters. She often found herself going over the accounts in her head while he pumped methodically and more than once she imagined she felt him mouthing multiplication tables against her shoulder. The child, though – the offspring of two of the most powerful Hyuga in generations – would be worth it.  
  
“My time is running out,” she said in clipped tones that night as she pulled up her nightgown. “If I’m not pregnant soon, I’ll have to give up on you and taint our line with Saito blood. Perhaps that old wise woman was wrong and you are sterile.”  
  
“Perhaps.”  
  
Still mostly dressed, Neji entered her unceremoniously. She never ceased to marvel at his ability to perform on command.  
  
After a quick prayer that tonight was the night, Hanabi eased herself back against the big pillows and began to tally the cost of a second new addition to the Main House.  
  
()()()()()  
  
The lack of heir weighed heavily on Katsuro’s mind that night as well. Somewhere along the line, between signing the marriage contract and growing accustomed to his strange new home, he had actually come to love his wife. Growing up the pampered son of the Water daimyo’s favored counselor, Katsuro had only known women as ornamentation. Before Hanabi, he had never met a woman so intelligent and capable. The fact that she barely gave him the time of day only made him want her more. So with a combination of a silver tongue, a stray flower from his hand-picked bouquet, and the assurances that he would protect her against Hanabi’s volatile temper, he talked the Branch House guard outside his wife’s room into letting him slip in to surprise her.  
  
()()()()()  
  
The Godaime found Hinata alone at the little house in the floodplain, the site of both her marriage’s happiest and worst memories. Naruto had moved out just like they had done everything in those last few years – wordlessly.  
  
No one answered the door, but Tsunade sensed the younger woman’s chakra very near. She found Hinata at the back fence, staring out over the Nakano River. The small backyard had changed since Tsunade had last drank tea there on the tiny porch. It was less cheerful somehow. Barren, even.  
  
“I was sorry…” Tsunade began, and Hinata didn’t turn her head. “Sorry to hear about you and Naruto. I—“ But she didn’t know what to say after that. “I saw it coming” didn’t seem like the kindest condolence she could offer. At least she wasn’t crying, though. Tsunade never had figured out how to handle a crying woman.  
  
“I was sorry, too,” Hinata answered faintly. “But that’s not what you’re here about, is it?”  
  
“No. I’m here about your cousin.”  
  
“Tetsuo?”  
  
“Neji.”  
  
Hinata finally turned to face her.  
  
“What about Neji?”  
  
Tsunade’s fingers suddenly itched to grab the hipflask in her pocket, but she refrained.  
  
“Your sister has accused him of rape. He is to be executed.”  
  
“That’s insane. Neji would never!” It was the first time, even in the frenetic setting of an operating room, that Tsunade had ever heard Hyuga Hinata raise her voice. Good, her hunch had been correct. She could use this. Tsunade ushered Hinata into the house, explaining all the while.  
  
“We think this could be a ruse to provoke a war with the village. That little bi—I mean, Hanabi has as much as told me that she doesn’t consider the Hyuga a part of Konoha anymore.” They both glanced out the kitchen window, in the direction of the Hyuga walls beyond the river. “She’s mustering an army in there, Hinata. Scout’s report that her husband’s parents are visiting even now. And you know who the Saitos are. If she needs resources, they have very deep pockets.”  
  
Hinata was shaking her head. Tsunade couldn’t keep the anger from her voice.  
  
“I’m trying to stop the Sound Village here, and the last goddamn thing I need on top of that is a war at home. Do you get me?”  
  
”I’ve been banished from my family, Godaime-sama. I’m just a simple medic-nin now. What on earth do you think I could do against the head of Hyuga?”  
  
Temptation won and Tsunade took a long swig from her hipflask.  
  
“Just go talk to her. Feel around, gather information. We both know Neji didn’t rape her. Go find out what he really did to piss her off so bad. And find out how the Saitos play into all this.” Hinata was shaking her head again. “You can do it, Hinata. You have to. You’re the only one who can.”  
  
Sensing Hinata’s reluctance, she pulled out her trump card.  
  
“I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but Hanabi killed your father.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
It was only much later in the evening, after the hipflask had been emptied and refilled and emptied again several times, that Tsunade realized what had been wrong in Hinata’s backyard. All the herbs had been tilled over.  
  
()()()()()  
  
They learned in the Academy that the world runs in a great circle. That history, the seasons, even a single human life is cyclical. This had always seemed obvious to Hinata. Intuitive.  
  
Hyuga would continue on its course. A benevolent ruler – as she now realized Hyuga Hiashi had been in his later years – would give way to a cruel one. Feelings between the Main House and the Branch house would cool and then they would warm again.  
  
The Nakano River would empty into the sea.  
  
The water where Hyuga Himiko died would evaporate eventually, and then condense into liquid again. When the air could not hold it anymore, the molecules that made up her mother’s last drink would turn to rain. Perhaps it was Hyuga Himiko’s final underwater tears that stung Hinata’s face on the icy afternoon when her cousin Neji revealed that there was not a single living soul left in this world who loved her.  
  
The knowledge that she would never be good enough was like a stone in her throat – much larger and more substantial than the flat rocks in her pockets and sewn into the lining of her best kimono. Hyuga Hinata knew that the world turned in cycles, just as she knew that her fate lay beneath the dark waters of the Nakano River.  
  
Her hands, just under the surface, were silvery, pale, and she imagined that they were already beginning to dissolve. When the water closed over her head, it seemed like she suddenly had all the time in the world. Time to think about her short life, of fate, and the nature of love.  
  
Love, she thought, was a lake that two people named on a night with a thousand stars. Only, the lake dried up, or the two lovers couldn’t find it again, or they didn’t even look.  
  
Love was watching cartwheels on the lip of a wooden fence, a gleam of pride in blank white eyes, and a tea kettle spinning and spinning until it finally sank beneath the brown water.  
  
Love was written in silver in his eyes, even in the icy spring rain.  
  
It took the last of her chakra to propel herself to the surface, and the air she never thought she would breathe again felt like praying.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Hanabi made her wait four hours before granting her an audience. Even so, when she was escorted into the dining room, Hinata’s best kimono was still wet at the cuffs and hems. She knew Hanabi would note it, as she had always noted everything.  
  
“You’ve been swimming, Hinata-oneesan?” she asked pleasantly.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Hinata ignored the sharp glance her sister shot her. So there were some things Hanabi’s spies didn’t know.  
  
The Hyuga leader sat at the traditional spot at the head of the big table, while Hinata was shown to a seat at her left. The servant who had escorted Hinata into the dining hall kept his eyes on the ground until Hanabi dismissed him with a curt, “Leave us.”  
  
Then they were alone for the first time in years.  
  
Hinata surprised both of them by beginning the dinner conversation.  
  
“How is your husband, Hanabi-sama?”  
  
Hanabi-sama. The head of Hyuga watched her sister’s lips as she shaped the words, then ran her tongue over her front teeth.  
  
“He’s spoiled and grows fat as an ox,” she answered truthfully. “And his parents are here, which is why you and I are dining alone. It’s a good excuse to get out from under them for one evening. Aren’t you lucky that you don’t have to worry about in-laws?”  
  
“Naruto and I are separated,” Hinata met her eyes. “But I suspect you knew that.”  
  
The servant brought their tea then, and both sisters spent a moment preparing their drinks to their liking.  
  
“I had heard something about it,” Hanabi finally agreed. “Honestly, what did you expect with someone like him?”  
  
“He’ll be Hokage someday,” Hinata said quietly.  
  
Hanabi laughed lightly.  
  
“I’m head of Hyuga. I don’t give a damn who is Hokage.”  
  
So it was true. Hanabi was breaking away from Konoha. And this, Hinata realized, was a little girl doing cartwheels on a fence all over again. Showing off in front of her less talented sister. Hinata took a good long look at the woman in front of her. She was beautiful, of course, slender and lithe. She ruled the most powerful clan in all of Konoha, perhaps in all the shinobi villages in the world. She was rich, had a husband who doted on her, and a band of followers who carried out her every whim. She was untouchable. But she would never, ever be satisfied for as long as she lived. That was what made her dangerous.  
  
The fact that it wasn’t her fault was what made it tragic.  
  
“I’ve come to beg you for Neji’s life,” Hinata changed the direction of the conversation abruptly.  
  
Hanabi didn’t bother to protest or play the simpering victim.  
  
“He raped me,” she challenged. “My husband witnessed it, for gods’ sakes. The penalty for harming the Head is death. You know that. He dies at dawn.”  
  
Their eyes locked , Hinata dared to reach up and brush a strand of hair behind her little sister’s ear. Hanabi was so surprised that she froze stock still and allowed it.  
  
“We both know he couldn’t have raped you, sister.” She tapped her own forehead meaningfully. “Everybody knows.”  
  
Hanabi swallowed and Hinata continued.  
  
“Just like they know that you killed Otousan.”  
  
Hanabi’s face transformed into a mask of rage. She jumped up, and her whole body shook. Her fingers flexed as if itching to strangle someone.  
  
“I would never! To say that is treason! I should have you killed for that!”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Hinata whispered. Hanabi would never know what for.  
  
A Hyuga woman doesn’t have the luxury of crying. She must turn her head and not see. Their mother had been the quintessential Hyuga woman – beautiful, meek, polite and courteous – and Hinata had lived her entire life in tribute to her.  
  
Yes, Hyuga Himiko had been a great woman, it was true. But she had also been wrong.  
  
And the poison Hinata slipped into her sister’s drink was the color of water.


	13. Epilogue - Rosemary

  _There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember._

_– Shakespeare, Hamlet_

  
It takes him two months to muster the courage to visit her at home.  
  
Neji finds Hinata in the backyard, tending her newly planted herb garden. When she sees him, a smile lights her face, and suddenly things that he doesn’t even know are broken feel whole again.  
  
“I lost all of Okaasan’s special hybrids,” she says, as if they had been in the middle of a conversation.  
  
Maybe, in a way, they had.  
  
“But I think I can grow some hybrids of my own that will be just as good or better.”  
  
He nods. She is hard not to look at.  
  
“So I’m optimistic,” she finishes. Then she stands up and wipes the dirt from her knees. “Won’t you come in and have some tea, Neji-san?”  
  
()()()()()  
  
After Uzumaki Hinata left the Hyuga compound that April evening, Hanabi retired to her room complaining of a stomach ache. Most of the household, and even her mother-in-law, secretly suspected that her feigned illness was an excuse to avoid her husband and in-laws. The “rape” had driven a wedge of suspicion between husband and wife, with Katsuro quickly realizing that the cursed seal prevented such unwanted attentions.  
  
Hanabi’s door guard, Hyuuga Taka, found her in her bed at four thirty that next morning. The young nin was alerted when she didn’t hear the usual noises of her leader’s morning exercises. Taka did not report her discovery until almost five though, out of fear of punishment. It took her that long to quell her panic and realize the only person who could reprimand her with the cursed seal anymore lay blue-lipped across her lavender silk coverlet.  
  
()()()()()  
  
“Are you well?” Hinata asks after they have sat down at the table with full tea cups.  
  
“Yes, Hinata-sama.” Now that he is here, the words aren’t coming easily. “I’ve been reinstated into the ANBU,” he forces himself to add. “They’re keeping us busy. The squad was dangerously understaffed for awhile.”  
  
They both regard separate whorls of wood on the table for a moment. It’s a painful subject they broach.  
  
()()()()()  
  
By the time the sun rose that morning, the Saito patriarch had called the Hokage in to give her expert opinion on Hanabi’s demise. After a short examination, Tsunade peeled her gloves off and stated succinctly:  
  
“Heart failure.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
“I heard you are to receive a commendation from the Godaime,” Hinata remarks to fill the silence. “That’s great news!”  
  
Neji looks away, embarrassed.  
  
“Thank you, Hinata-sama”  
  
“Just Hinata, Neji. Please just Hinata.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
After that Neji was, of course, exonerated. Saito Katsuro requested a meeting with him that lasted long into the night. The next morning, as the Saito Clan – all of them – prepared to depart, Katsuro shook Neji’s hand. What happened at their meeting was the subject of rampant speculation for years, but everyone knew better than to ask the reserved Hyuga genius and he never told.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Neji takes a deep breath. There were hard confessions, there were excruciating confessions, and then there was this confession.  
  
“Hinata-sa--.”  
  
He stops and begins again, more adamantly. “Hinata. I would never have raped Hanabi.”  
  
His bandaged hand lies on the table between them. Hinata covers it with her own.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“She wanted a strong Hyuga heir. But there is no excuse for what I did. I can only say that she held something over me to make me comply. If it hadn’t been for that—well, I would rather have died.”  
  
“I know that, too.” Hinata’s hand tightens around his. He is aware of the faded scars on his knuckles, the ones he earned defending her honor so long ago. “And I’m glad you did what you did, because truthfully—I don’t want to live in a world without you in it.”  
  
His nod is barely perceptible.  
  
()()()()()  
  
At first, Hyuga functioned quite well without a leader. Without the Saito’s money, the elaborate construction projects fizzled and died. The nin forced to resign their commissions under Hanabi’s leadership rejoined Konoha’s forces. They were just in time, it seemed. The war with Sound loomed, more imminent than ever.  
  
()()()()()  
  
Neji is grateful when Hinata chooses that moment to get up and top off their tea cups.  
  
“This tea is excellent. Your best yet,” he comments after taking a sip, holding the steaming cup by the delicate handle.  
  
“I’m still experimenting,” she smiles. “It’s not quite perfected.”  
  
Neji nods again. Then he stands up. Having just sat down with her fresh cup of tea, Hinata starts to stand too, but Neji puts his hand out to stop her.  
  
“No, I want to do this right.” He clears his throat.  
  
“Hinata-sama.” He doesn’t catch himself and she doesn’t bother correcting him this time. “You probably know I’m not here for personal reasons.”  
  
She looks down and for some reason he can’t help but think back to that night on the wall. In the stinging rain.  
  
“A group of the former councilors have gathered. We have decided that we want to invite you back as nominal head of the family. There will be restrictions, of course. The Council will have more power, and use of the cursed seal will be prohibited. But, well, there are things you know that we don’t, and we…” He pauses. “We need you.”  
  
By the end of his request, Hinata has sat her cup down and stood up.  
  
“You say you need me, Neji. But do you _want_ me?”  
  
Neji looks at her standing in her spotless kitchen holding a porcelain tea cup. This is his cousin, the woman he has been in love with for over half his life. He never planned to tell her. That day on the wall, he told himself that she would be better off not knowing, and since then he had thought of a thousand more reasons to convince himself that was true. But he knew too of the poisons that Hyuga Himiko grew in her garden. His father had warned him of them long ago. He had never imagined that shy, frail Hinata would ever be able to use them. What arrogance, to think that he knew what was best for her. What audacity to think that – just because he could look through her chest and watch its quickening beat – that he could ever really know the secrets of her heart.  
  
“Hinata-sama,” he swallows. “I’ve never wanted anything in this world more than I’ve wanted you.”  
  
()()()()()  
  
Most of the heirlooms of Hinata’s life are gone. The heart-shaped pendant that her father gave her on her twelfth birthday, once her mother’s, was taken back from her pink musical jewelry box when she eloped. The hybrid herbs, her mother’s legacy, were burned once, and later Hinata tilled their progeny under the earth in her own backyard as she prepared to end her life. The red top, an unborn child’s toy, has been donated to charity. Lake Hinata with its distinctive white rocks is lost in the maze of lakes that dot Konoha’s forest, and her sister Hanabi’s ashes are scattered around the four corners of the village. A cheap silver wedding band lies somewhere at the bottom of the Nakano River.  
  
She’s twenty-seven and has a scar for every year of her life. She has done things that she will regret until she dies. There are things she has not done that she will regret just as long. But she has to put the past behind her. She knows now that _that_ is the only way for a Hyuga woman to survive.  
  
As her beloved watches, Hyuga Hinata steps back and slips the straps of her sun dress down over her shoulders until it pools in the floor, a puddle of lavender cotton and flowers. She has never imagined that Neji’s hands, so rough and callused, could flicker over her skin like butterfly wings. Neji kisses her then, and she thinks she can hear the stars moving outside in the night sky. He kisses her neck, her ears, her stomach. He kisses the insides of her elbows, the back of her knees. He kisses her with fifteen years of want until she is so overcome with desire that she could almost let herself cry.  
  
A week later, Hinata guides Neji’s hand as he marks her with the distinctive forehead seal. He is reluctant, but his hands do not shake. It hurts, but she does not cry. Ever after, every Hyuga born with the Byakugan is marked. It is understood as a necessary sacrifice for the clan – it keeps their abilities from falling into the wrong hands, after all – but the stigma associated with the green symbol soon fades away, as no one now left alive knows how to activate the curse. Further, the only scroll containing the vital instructions is destroyed in a small brush fire in the area of the Hyuga compound known as Himiko’s Garden. There is a wedding in that same spot the next year, a small affair of just close family and friends. The groom is handsome in a black formal kimono; the bride wears her mother’s wedding gown.  
  
When she repeats her vows, Hyuga Hinata cries.  
  
She cries because she knows now that the past, well, that was nothing. But this…  
  
This is everything.


End file.
